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Comment by Michael Levin on August 23, 2017 at 7:42am

Hi Nicholas, Did you notice we're having an OrlandoJUG meeting tomorrow (Thursday)? Hope you can make it. 

Comment by Michael Levin on August 1, 2017 at 8:01pm

One easy way to share info is to post a blog post, or a discussion within the Ojug group or the Forum. I can give you admin privileges in the Ojug group and you can create a webpage within that group. 

Mentoring happens in Hackathons, which I've held once with a mentor, in that case it was James Ward. It went over well. Off the clock, you need to make friends you can ask questions of. You can post snippets or as much code as you like here and ask people to comment. For example, you can post a Discussion in the Forum and add snippets to it.

Comment by Nicholas Belli on August 1, 2017 at 6:24pm

Hi Michael! Thanks for the reply. I didn't originally see the OJug Meetup group so I didn't think it existed, but I was able to find it and submit a request to join. Thank you!

As far as the Meetup information sharing, since there are so many intermingled languages and opportunities to share knowledge between APIs, I thought it might be useful for us as Java Developers to see what might go into the front end design or the integration of a Web interface, and share knowledge about what considerations we go through as well. It may even be useful to let everyone know about the SQL and database communities and trainings in case someone needs to find out how to make their application work more effectively with their databases. Almost a full-stack approach if you will.

As far as the programming and learning is coming, I'm really enjoying it tremendously. My final project this semester was to build a simple 3 Layer Architecture system, so I built a very small and basic front end GUI with JavaFX and integrated it with a simple table in MySQL. I'm so used to SQLServer at work that the SQL syntax was a bit strange in the code, but it was definitely a fun challenge. 

My next step is to get on Git and GitHub to understand how that works so that I can start uploading my projects (which is what I have been told is an essential step to finding a job in the industry). I've also been told that pulling down open source projects and working on bugs is another way, but I don't even have a grasp of where to start looking for that. 

As far as mentoring a new Java Developer, are there any groups out there that do that sort of thing? A college education can only take me so far before I feel like I need to find questions to answer and challenges to solve with my programs, but without the feedback of "you did this well, but you missed this here" it feels like any of us could develop bad habits just because "it works". I'd be open to ideas on that front. 

As always, thanks so much, and I may reach out to you to see where I can assist with my currently limited schedule. 

Comment by Michael Levin on August 1, 2017 at 10:13am

Hi Nicholas, Correct! The upcoming OJUG meeting will be posted right here in the Codetown Events section and on the Meetup page. When you join the Codetown OJUG group, you will get an email when a comment is posted and that includes meeting announcements. There's also a mailing list with about 1400 people on it!

I got an inquiry the other day about a presentation someone wants to give so we'll see what happens with that.

Sure, if you'd like to post Orlando events we can create a page in the OJUG group here on Codetown and we may also be able to put them on the Meetup page.

The next OJUG meeting will be at the new Canvs offices in Winter Park. I'm looking for a speaker and sponsor. Summer is usually slow so maybe we'll have an August meetup if there's interest. I'd love some help with organizing so if you're interested or know someone who is, please contact me.

How's the programming coming along? Learning and working on some interesting stuff?