Getting ready for an interview

Hi there
We'll first of all, a little background info. I've basically only used Java for school project so far, studied it for 2 years and read a few books on the subject and I'm starting to feel pretty decent at it. I recently moved and through a contact I got a shot at a really attractive job-opportunity (Junior Java Developer) at a company I'd kill to work at.

Now to my question: I've spend these latest few days to read up the language to get better at specificly Java, schools been pretty "broad" since we've been working with everything from html/css to java/c++ but it's been clear to me for some time now that Java is the most intresting of em.
What do you guys think I should read up on to be more ready for the interview?


Thx a bunch
//Charlie

Most of the time, it's not necessarily the language you use, but how you solve problems that's most attractive to companies.

Some general topics you should be familiar with in no particular order (note that what you'll actually want to know is strongly dependent on what they're looking for):

1. Problem solving skills (and learning skills) ** Probably the most important
2. Data structures (all types of lists, heaps, hash tables, trees, graphs, etc.)
3. Multi-threading (depending on the type of job, this may or may not be important)
4. Debugging skills
5. Algorithms

Java dependent items:
It depends on what kind of job it is. If it's something web related, it would probably be a good idea to study up on Java networking and similar stuff. If it's something that uses Java GUI's (either AWT, SWT, or Swing), it'd be a good idea to learn about those.

good luck ;)

To add to hw's great post: it all depends upon who interviews you of course, but general advice would be know the job and the company: both will give you a clue about what you should know and study. You should receive general questions on your skills - java specific and non-java specific (algorithms, data structures, and problem solving). Google 'java interview questions' and you'll gather quite a few common questions that are specific and the answers to which you should know.

Thanks again for all the input so far!

I've been digging into Swing these last few days, thinking of making a soduko application with an AI that can solve sodukos and maybe even generate new ones. Logical problem solving (Iq-tests with figures etc) has always been a strong side of mine, thats probably the reason why I enjoy programming so much. I found a great way to use this site as sort of a tutorial was to create the programs in the "Paid Java Projects" thread. Only been a member for half a day and I already want to marry this site and have kids with it.

Btw, if I'm ever to use this program I'm writing atm as sort of a reference, is it bad programming to always extend JFrame in your applications in order to more easily make them Applets later on? I don't really understand whats frowned upon and whats not since I'm sure we've taken lots of shortcuts like this in school. Also, is there any way to draw shapes on your panels without making a new object that extends JPanel and overrides the paintComponent method?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Charlie

Only been a member for half a day and I already want to marry this site and have kids with it.

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=)) That made my laugh out loud. Thats a compliment and a half!

Generally, JFrames are used for fully-fledged Java applications. It's not necessary to over-ride this class, but to simply write event listeners that take in the JFrame/some other component and perform the necessary actions from the event listener. This prevents you from ending up with one massive class at the end, which makes debugging a nightmare.

If you need a custom component, I'd suggest over-ridding the closest component to it, for example I generally over-ride the JPanel class when I need some sort of canvas to do custom painting with (like a plotting utility).

Another advantage of over-riding the JPanel class is that you can very easily inter-change between full Java applications and Applets by simply setting the content pane of either the Applet or of the JFrame (almost no change required).