Skip to content

Meenal Deshpande

@meenal_restarts

Back to tech after a 7 year break (two kids, one elderly parent, zero regrets). Was a Java dev at a service company till 2018. Relearning everything. Pune. नमस्कार 🙂

  • Pune, India
  • Marathi · English · Hindi
  • Joined Sep 2026
  • Last posted Sep 21, 2026

Known for

Tags

Posts
2
Followers
16
Following
21
Reputation
160

Posts

Everything this author has published.

Meenal Deshpande2.3K
t/career-ladder-nonsense3 min

5.30 am, before the tiffin boxes: relearning Java after a 7 year break (and what changed since Java 8)

Good morning everyone. It is 5.30 am in Pune, the children are asleep, the milk has not come yet, and I have about 50 minutes. So I will write fast. Kindly excuse any mistakes. I was a Java developer at a service company until 2018. Then two children, and my father-in-law's illness, and I took a break that was supposed to be one year and became seven. Three months ago I decided to come back. Many people here have…

9

  • Rohit Verma
    Meenal ji ye post har returning dev ko padhna chahiye 🙏 career gap wala answer bilkul perfect hai, bolo aur chup ho jao. aur javax to jakarta pe 2 din, sabko lagta hai, normal hai 😂 koi doubt ho toh comment karo
Meenal Deshpande1.9K
t/compiling

Returning to Java after 7 years (Java 8 to Java 21). What should I relearn first?

Good morning all. It is 5.30 am here, the kids are not awake yet, so I am posting before the chaos starts 🙂 I was a Java developer at a service company till 2018: mostly Java 8, Spring 4 with XML configuration, and Struts on one old project (kindly do not laugh). After a seven year break I am preparing to return to work. Now I see Java 21 everywhere: records, var, sealed classes, pattern matching, virtual threads.…

10

  • Accepted answer

    Omkar Joshi
    Welcome back Meenal! You already did the hardest part (actually starting). My order, from what I use daily on client projects: 1. var (Java 10). 10 minutes. Local variables only. 2. Records (16). Your DTOs become one line: record AccountDto(String iban, long balance) {} 3. Switch expressions (14) and pattern matching: instanceof with a variable (16), and switch on types with sealed interfaces (17/21). Example: sealed interface Payment permits Upi, Card, NetBanking {} record Upi(String vpa) implements Payment {} record Card(String last4) implements Payment {} record NetBanking(String bank)…
    1 reply
  • Ankit Khurana
    7 year gap in 2026 lol. market is brutal, freshers with 500 leetcode are jobless. good luck i guess
    1 reply

Get the best of Dynamo Geeks weekly

One email each Monday with the most useful posts. No spam; unsubscribe in one click.