Hi all,
Most of my work experience in the last years is with Visual Basic 6, Delphi / Free Pascal, C# and T-SQL. I've written a medium sized Java web app with Wicket a few years ago, so I'm not a total newbie, but now I feel like training & certifying in Java in hopes of a job change. This includes properly learning Java SE and EE, and the Java "ecosystem", loosely defined as tools, IDEs, frameworks and libraries, from Ant to Spring, from Netbeans to Jenkins, etc.
After reviewing online training options, I've come to the conclusion that I have to divide this all into Java certification, and everything else.
For the certs, I guess nothing can beat the training offered by ORACLE University, specially on the higher levels (EE), plus a couple of books like OCA 8 by Boyarsky & Selikoff and OCA/OCP 7 by Sierra & Bates for the basic levels. OU seems a bit expensive (relative to average south american salaries), but they cover all the way up (JPA, JSP, etc) and, well, they ARE Java...
Regarding the "everything else" part, I've taken a look at Udemy and read a handful of comparisons between Udemy, Lynda, Treehouse, Codeschool and many others. Treehouse and Pluralsight offer learning tracks and have good reviews but a fixed rate would only be worth if I could be sure I can dedicate some serious time every month to it. Having older parents and small children to care, this is not the case, so I would prefer a per course pricing. Udemy and others have a handful of free courses but quality varies, so it would probably be wise to use a mix of two or more of all these sites.
Having said all this, is there anything else I need to take into account ? Is there any site comparable to Treehouse or Pluralsight but priced by actual usage ?
Thanks in advance,
Alex
Most of my work experience in the last years is with Visual Basic 6, Delphi / Free Pascal, C# and T-SQL. I've written a medium sized Java web app with Wicket a few years ago, so I'm not a total newbie, but now I feel like training & certifying in Java in hopes of a job change. This includes properly learning Java SE and EE, and the Java "ecosystem", loosely defined as tools, IDEs, frameworks and libraries, from Ant to Spring, from Netbeans to Jenkins, etc.
After reviewing online training options, I've come to the conclusion that I have to divide this all into Java certification, and everything else.
For the certs, I guess nothing can beat the training offered by ORACLE University, specially on the higher levels (EE), plus a couple of books like OCA 8 by Boyarsky & Selikoff and OCA/OCP 7 by Sierra & Bates for the basic levels. OU seems a bit expensive (relative to average south american salaries), but they cover all the way up (JPA, JSP, etc) and, well, they ARE Java...
Regarding the "everything else" part, I've taken a look at Udemy and read a handful of comparisons between Udemy, Lynda, Treehouse, Codeschool and many others. Treehouse and Pluralsight offer learning tracks and have good reviews but a fixed rate would only be worth if I could be sure I can dedicate some serious time every month to it. Having older parents and small children to care, this is not the case, so I would prefer a per course pricing. Udemy and others have a handful of free courses but quality varies, so it would probably be wise to use a mix of two or more of all these sites.
Having said all this, is there anything else I need to take into account ? Is there any site comparable to Treehouse or Pluralsight but priced by actual usage ?
Thanks in advance,
Alex