Is this an opportunity? .NET to Java

krazyklown

Hi

Just trying to get some collective wisdom here....

Been a .NET developer for the last seven years - the company i currently work for have just told us they dont have enough .NET work to sustain our team and so are asking us to switch to Java development (they do alot more in that).

I cannot decide if this is an opportunity or not - to be honest, i had been flirting with the idea of making the move as i think there are far more opportunities out there in Java (looking at job searches etc). I have no idea what i should be looking for in terms of a tech stack to adjudicate if this will be a good career move.

I would really appreciate some insight or even just things i just be thinking about. It might be a good time to move companies as i have been here almost three years now.

Thanks
KK

John_Mc

krazyklown wrote: »

Hi

Just trying to get some collective wisdom here....

Been a .NET developer for the last seven years - the company i currently work for have just told us they dont have enough .NET work to sustain our team and so are asking us to switch to Java development (they do alot more in that).

I cannot decide if this is an opportunity or not - to be honest, i had been flirting with the idea of making the move as i think there are far more opportunities out there in Java (looking at job searches etc). I have no idea what i should be looking for in terms of a tech stack to adjudicate if this will be a good career move.

I would really appreciate some insight or even just things i just be thinking about. It might be a good time to move companies as i have been here almost three years now.

Thanks
KK

Why wouldn't it be an opportunity?

If you have the right attitude and are willing to put the work in to tackle the learning curve then you're obviously going to come out all the better from it in terms of career because you have worked with Java and .Net in a professional environment. It also proves that you can learn quickly.

I don't think there would be that much of a learning curve though as it's object orientated and the syntax is pretty much the same. The real work will be with learning the libraries, IDE, build & deployment processes etc.

krazyklown

Appreciate the reply - I amnt overly worried about the learning curve as I see that as part of the broader IT game anyway. I just wonder should i be moving towards the client-side scripting like angular, react etc which seems to have alot of hype. Basically is moving from .NET to Java more of a sideways move than a forward one? I am trying to think in terms of the longer term, what would benefit my career and keep my skillset 'relevant'?

Smurfette principle

Hi OP

With the constant demand on Automation skills in the IT industry and more and more companies using the likes of Selenium and Bugzilla learning Java isn't so much a choice anymore than a necessity if you want to stay competitive so it certainly wouldn't hurt your career to know it although if you are going to go to the effort I'd recommend looking into Scala first (I'd post a link to it's wiki but new user so can't so you'll just have to google it).

It's basically like Java but with C# elements (that's not exactly true but as lies go it's pretty good as a short term explanation until you look it up yourself) so if you know one or the other the learning curve wouldn't be that steep and more and more companies are asking for it. Not sure if it will ever fully replace C# and Java but it is giving them a run for their money and you might even get brownie points from your boss for showing some initiative and putting in the research of what's relevant in IT at the moment.

BrokenArrows

Seems like a no brainer to me. Learning java on the job and be paid a non junior salary.

If you dont like it then you can always find another .net job.

krazyklown

Thanks guys for the input, gonna give the Java a go and see how i get on.
Much appreciated.
KK