Agreed. The least effective developers I’ve had the displeasure of working with never understand how their code executes end-to-end. And the best ones have a deep knowledge of it.
This is no fluke! If you don’t know how a classloader works with the Java classpath, how to set various JVM flags for operating the JVM, etc., then I’d argue that you’re an amateur, and I wouldn’t trust you to write correct code in a production setting. It’s critical knowledge to know how your code runs, and if you don’t know that, then stay away from production systems. If the goal of these courses is to teach students enough about Java to use it in a professional setting, then knowing how classfiles are produced, bundled, distributed, loaded, and executed by a JVM is critical knowledge.
More succinctly, if you don’t know how your code makes it to a production server and gets executed, you’re not ready to work on it.
(And if the goal isn't to teach students how to use Java in a professional setting, then why are they learning it at all? Use a teaching language so students can focus on the concepts instead of Java's idiosyncracies.)
eh, I understand the sentiment - but it's a little overkill. Junior programmers can be code reviewed and taught these things over time, and also be wildly productive in a production setting.
Sure you can teach junior programmers all kinds of stuff that they should have already learned or should know how to learn, I do it all the time. I'm arguing that this is crucial information that even entry-level engineers should know. If they don't, then I give them a link to the relevant documentation and politely ask them to read it. It's a prerequisite.
Are there any books or articles that go through the things that you’ve mentioned like how the class loader works etc? Most of the tutorials or books I have seen do not even touch this aspect and I want to get better at it.
Oracle documentations typically. And javadoc for those classes.
But I don't think it is such a key to anything. It is sort of stuff that is easy to learn when you need it, easy to forget and not useful most of time. It makes sense to read when you done learning other things, but not for beginners.
This is no fluke! If you don’t know how a classloader works with the Java classpath, how to set various JVM flags for operating the JVM, etc., then I’d argue that you’re an amateur, and I wouldn’t trust you to write correct code in a production setting. It’s critical knowledge to know how your code runs, and if you don’t know that, then stay away from production systems. If the goal of these courses is to teach students enough about Java to use it in a professional setting, then knowing how classfiles are produced, bundled, distributed, loaded, and executed by a JVM is critical knowledge.
More succinctly, if you don’t know how your code makes it to a production server and gets executed, you’re not ready to work on it.
(And if the goal isn't to teach students how to use Java in a professional setting, then why are they learning it at all? Use a teaching language so students can focus on the concepts instead of Java's idiosyncracies.)