Re: List activity... /Java

Regarding the Java explosion.......

My current client is a very large, well known, fairly conservative, retail 
company (70%Synon rest Cobol & RPG) that is spending big bucks on a pilot 
project using Java and the Visual Age IDE. They've had 10 consultants/3 
employees(new to JAVA) working for 10 months with implementation due in August. 
 So far it appears the company is very excited about the results.  They appear 
to be believers in what JAVA can do and there is a good chance they will due a 
fair portion of their new interactive processing developement in JAVA.

The learning curve for object orienented dev. as we all know is very high.  An 
AS/400 COBOL friend 6 months ago was sent to a week of training and then 
started working side by side(same cube) with a very good JAVA consultant as he 
worked on his part of the JAVA project.  After 6 months of un-beatable on the 
job training my friend says from 1-10(10 being high), he'd  rate himself at 
about a 3 in technical proficiency.    

It's been difficult, but he hopes he never has to go back to COBOL.  Based on 
conversations with my client, they have no interest in hiring consultants that 
have only went thru the "Learn JAVA in 21 days" book. They are looking for 
people with proven project experience.  The old you can't get experience with 
out working and you can't get work without experience.

For what it's worth, my own personal agenda is to continue intensive training 
in JAVA/Web dev. hiring an OO guru friend as a mentor during this process, 
maybe meeting with him once a week for assistance.  Then I'd offer myself to my 
client at considerably reduced rate for 1-2 years.  Since I have the business 
knowledge already, this might work. 

The 400 will be around for another 20 years, regardless.  As the number of 
consultants decrease considerably, the ones that are still expert in doing RPG 
and COBOL will probably make pretty good rates.  It's a funny thing, isn't it?



Tim