This was 2003, and was for a job with the State. I was absolutely atrocious as I had no idea what I was doing and really got no support to figure out how to code in the real world. Knowing now what I know now, that codebase could only have been created by sticking new grad after new grad on it without any peer reviews. The amount of nested if statements made it impossible to follow.
I don't know why anyone would hire these consulting firms other than plausible deniability of blame.
I would imagine that most large corporations and government code is still Java, only specialist systems are still COBOL.
"The amount of nested if statements made it impossible to follow"
I'm floored that you mentioned this. One memory I often cite of my early days there was walking past a colleague's desk and seeing a diagonal line of text from the upper-left corner of her monitor to the lower-right. Closer inspection revealed that she was processing a 30-character part number with as many nested IF statements, instead of iterating through it.
Even as a 21-year-old I was appalled that this was being delivered to clients.
It was awful, but not being exposed to Java, or professional development before I assumed it was how it was meant to be.
I still have to use Java from time to time, and I dislike the amount of "Spring magic" that colleagues try to use with it. No wonder the kids end up writing junk, they are used to never understanding what's going on anyway.
I don't know why anyone would hire these consulting firms other than plausible deniability of blame.
I would imagine that most large corporations and government code is still Java, only specialist systems are still COBOL.