If you learn Spring MVC 3.0, what would you need to know to get a job working with an earlier version of Spring?

Question

I've been learning Spring 3.0 MVC.

However, from the few Spring 2.x examples I have seen, there are significant differences in earlier versions of Spring.

I have two questions about getting a job working with Spring:

1. If I am reasonably confident with Spring MVC 3.0, what would I need to learn to get a job working with a version of Spring prior to 3.0?

2. Is there a big difference between "Spring experience" and "Spring MVC experience" in a job requirement?

Answer 1

1. Spring 3 makes a lot of things smoother and easier. Doing the same things with versions prior to 3.0 can often take a lot of extra work and configuration. However, it is essentially the same framework, just with some extra bells and whistles. If I was hiring, and was using 2.5, I wouldn't insist that a candidate had specific pre-3.0 experience.

2. Yes, I would say so. Spring MVC is big, complex beast, and you can be perfectly au fait with Spring as an application framework , without having much feel for it as an MVC framework.