Had Ruby interview, considering J2ME as well ...

[surfunbear]

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.

 

[gregarican]

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]

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.

There is not just one reason. I do need a job however. I have a ruby
project I have been working on on my laptop.

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

I have done some java programming. I have done C++ for 10 years, and
Perl for 2 or 3 years. I don't feel motivated to write a J2EE app on my
laptop in order to learn J2EE. I like to read books, but ultimately I
feel I need to write code to be able to comfortably put something on my
resume. If someone wants to hire me to write enterprise beans or
something in J2EE I would probably be happy with that, but if I don't
have the experience they may not want to hire me. Without the
motivation to write J2EE code on my own, I'm probably caught in catch
22.

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...

I focus on different languages at different times, but even one
language can take allot of time to learn well. Python sounds
interesting, not sure I'd care for C#, or .net.

 

[gregarican]

I don't feel motivated to write a J2EE app on my
laptop in order to learn J2EE. I like to read books, but ultimately I
feel I need to write code to be able to comfortably put something on my
resume. [...] Without the
motivation to write J2EE code on my own, I'm probably caught in catch
22.

I can empathize with you. There was a mobile app I was trying to deploy
on Palm OS PDA's and the best vehicle for this that I found was J2ME.
So I tried to learn the ins and outs of this Java implementation. First
by reading books and online documentation. But that can only get you so
far. Especially for all of the tedious ins and outs of a Java API doc
set

Ultimately I needed to write some smaller, less ambitious test programs
using it to get hands-on experience. Without that area my practical
knowledge of J2ME wasn't complete. And I just couldn't make myself do
it. Since this wasn't 100% necessary to port the mobile app over to
Palm OS I just wound up settling for an app that ran on Windows Mobile
and Embedded Linux mobile platforms.

I run into similar situations with Smalltalk. There were a couple of
mockups of applications I was working on that I completed using Dolphin
Smalltalk. They have very nice tie-ins with Windows and make it easy to
tap into existing API's such as ActiveX components. But I couldn't make
the leap of faith to start writing a bunch of sample programs using
Smalltalk to get the required hands-on. I have perhaps 8 Smalltalk
books and have studied the syntax and basic classes from here 'til
doomsday. But without the discpline to write test code on it my
knowledge isn't practical.

Maybe this means that I just like Ruby better and unless I'm forced to
use an alternative language I can't make myself