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How often do developers get to truly choose the language they use? Every day There's absolutely nothing stopping any developer from learning other skills and

How often do developers get to truly choose the language they use? Every day There's absolutely nothing stopping any developer from learning other skills and changing jobs. I was an enterprise dev that taught myself Ruby in the evenings until I had enough skill to move away from the enterprise world. I've been making a living from Ruby coding for just over 3 years now (probably worth noting that I'm almost 40 and have 4 kids). Pay is slightly less, but work satisfaction is so much higher is't a joke. Seriously, your current employer might not let you change, but you don't have to stay with them forever. It's your life, not theirs [Edited to add: I see comment here about job ads. What I discovered early on is that in the Ruby world, and probably Python et al, most jobs are got via reputation or mailing lists. pretty much never on mainstream job boards]

mgkimsal 15y ago
'Seriously, your current employer might not let you change, but you don't have to stay with them forever.' And as we've seen with a lot of companies, they're certainly not going to stay with you forever.
city41 15y ago
There's absolutely nothing stopping any developer from learning other skills and changing jobs. Sure, that works to an extent. I was a .NET developer and now I work in Ruby and JavaScript. But if I really had my druthers I'd be writing games for a living. But we can't all work for Valve. So it still remains that for many developers they take what they can get. Some aren't talented enough to get the job they really want. Others have other obligations that prevent them (such as families, geography, the economy, etc). So it still remains that many people code in Java because there are large, entrenched systems written in Java that need maintaining. I of course have no research to support this, but something tells me most developers -- especially passionate ones -- would not choose to work in Java over all other possibilities in 2011.

mgkimsal 15y ago

'Seriously, your current employer might not let you change, but you don't have to stay with them forever.' And as we've seen with a lot of companies, they're certainly not going to stay with you forever.

city41 15y ago

There's absolutely nothing stopping any developer from learning other skills and changing jobs. Sure, that works to an extent. I was a .NET developer and now I work in Ruby and JavaScript. But if I really had my druthers I'd be writing games for a living. But we can't all work for Valve. So it still remains that for many developers they take what they can get. Some aren't talented enough to get the job they really want. Others have other obligations that prevent them (such as families, geography, the economy, etc). So it still remains that many people code in Java because there are large, entrenched systems written in Java that need maintaining. I of course have no research to support this, but something tells me most developers -- especially passionate ones -- would not choose to work in Java over all other possibilities in 2011.