greg.kujawa
7/25/2006 1:37:00 AM
What is your primary motivation for choosing a language? Is it
prevalence in the job market? If so then from what I have heard there
should be an increasing demand for Rails developers, although I don't
sample the market currently so I wouldn't have a tangible idea.
Learning Rails and then buidling upon that to further get familiar with
Ruby shouldn't be that huge of an undertaking. Independently you should
be able to get basic practical understanding under your belt in a
couple of months on the side. But if you aren't seeing many job
postings in your area for Rails developers then perhaps the selft
taught route might be more for your own enrichment.
But if you are looking for the most common languages in the job market
I would imagine C#, C++, and Java would be the ones to tackle. You are
correct in that the J2EE API is huge. If you get the basics of Java in
your head then diving into the various API of J2EE, J2SE, J2ME, etc.
isn't out of the question. It's not like a J2EE developer has
everything memorized. The API documentation is someone's right arm in a
lot of cases working with Java. That's why someone joked that the "Java
in a Nutshell" book that O'Reilly prints is over 1,000 pages long! It
actually is. Wow. Ick :-)
If you do learn Java, then moving over and learning C++ or C# isn't a
huge departure. It's kind of like someone who knows Ruby jumping into
Python. Emphasis on "kind of like" I guess. At least the languages are
related enough so it's not a quantum leap like learning Lisp and then
jumping into BASIC.
With J2ME the market should be there. Embedded application develop
seems to be all the rage with all of the smartphones, PDA's, etc.
saturing that market. Plus all of the other devices that run Java which
are even smaller and more "dumbed down." Microsoft has their Pocket
..NET Framework (or whatever they are calling it this week) so you could
conceivably code something is C# and deploy it on Windows Mobile. Plus
it seems as if they are starting to corner the PDA/Smartphone OS
market.
For me I never restricted myself to learning just one language. But I
am more of a hobbyist too...
surfunbear@yahoo.com wrote:
> I had sent a contractor the following message (below). They are going
> to have J2ME training and they say they help with job placement for
> J2ME, I might like suggestions on how to determine if I should take
> their training as it will not be free, but they haven't told me he cost
> yet. Any other comments regarding my job search would be welcome.
>
>
> I have done some Java programming, and have studied the
> Java certification manual. However, I had gotten interested in
> Ruby on Rails programming and have been working on a Rails
> projecton my laptop. Ruby appeals to me for a number of
> reasons. However, it somewhat new and there are less job
> opportunities using Ruby. I had an interview for a Ruby on Rails
> job last week, and have not heard back and there is a limited
> number of related job postings I have found. I am particularly
> interested in J2ME because I have found that the J2EE package
> is such a huge API and I am not sure if it really appeals to me
> or not. Many Ruby programmer advocates have been very
> critical of J2EE. I also have the Sun Certified Web Development
> Component study guide and found it to be somewhat
> cumbersome where there is just allot of infrastructure and
> administration involved, and I seem to be more motivated by
> focusing more on programming and studying languages and
> simpler APIs etc. Thus, I am very interested in studying J2ME.