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Question for Anthony DePalma

 
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From your experience...Is functional programming (i.e. lambda expressions) expertise something that companies are demanding for a Java developer or are most of them still using Java 7 or even older versions?

Thank you
 
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Hi,

Nice to have another addition to our library. But I see lot of interviewers asking to write a program and then later optimizing it, does your book include such examples - like for instance how to search for a word in dictionary, or how to optmize so and so code..

Thanks,
Mujahed
 
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Antonio Evora Gala wrote:From your experience...Is functional programming (i.e. lambda expressions) expertise something that companies are demanding for a Java developer or are most of them still using Java 7 or even older versions?

Thank you



Hi Antonio,

In my experience it depends on the company - bigger companies are much slower to adopt the latest versions of Java than smaller companies or startups. The reason is usually due to security concerns and the fact that upgrading is a time consuming process that requires a lot of testing and it doesn't provide a visible 'revenue boost' that usually drives their decisions. Sometimes it takes years after a new release before they even consider an upgrade!

But as for functional programming in general, Java is primarily an OOP language, so that will always be the focus. Lambdas are a nice way to reduce the verbosity of the language, but keep in mind that they don't do anything that you couldn't already do with anonymous classes. Of course there will be specialized scenarios where purely functional programming is useful, but I suspect that it will be the minority of the time. Solid, object-oriented programming will be in the highest demand, with functional experience as more of a 'bonus' feature.
 
Anthony DePalma
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Mujahed Syed wrote:Hi,

Nice to have another addition to our library. But I see lot of interviewers asking to write a program and then later optimizing it, does your book include such examples - like for instance how to search for a word in dictionary, or how to optmize so and so code..

Thanks,
Mujahed



Hi Mujahed,

I have a chapter in the book specifically geared towards solving and optimizing programming problems. In each one I recommend the approach of first coming up with a simple solution that works, and then looking at ways to optimize it. Its a high level explanation however, so there is no code sample. But I tried to walk through each problem in the mindset of someone who is unfamiliar with the problem.

As for the optimizations themselves, some examples include changing a recursive method to a loop to reduce the overhead of method calls, using different data structures and comparing their Big O notations, and reducing memory footprints.
 
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