In this world? No. (I am older than you by a little bit.) This is what you do: D. Take a contract with a fortune 1000, spend a year digging yourself out of a

In this world? No. (I am older than you by a little bit.) This is what you do: D. Take a contract with a fortune 1000, spend a year digging yourself out of a hole, and move on. Does it mean that somewhere early along your path, you need to pick up some Java or .Net or Oracle? Sure. But you have decades of productive coding ahead of you; a few years is not going to kill your dreams. Look: not every portion of your life is going to be glamorous, save for the very lucky. It is possible to learn something from everybody, even a "25-year-old who only knows half a programming language." I think what I learned most from spending some time in the developed world is not to be so self-righteous about bullshit like this. You could be parking your ass in front of a subway line telling people, "God Bless you, please buy a packet of Kleenex."