Leaving Java, Taking on .NET

Like a bolt from the blue, my employer announced their plan to shelve Java and migrate to .NET. I am a true blue Java aficionado who believed that, he was hired as an expert to help create and foster a Java team. Now, this sudden shift in plan, left a Hobson's choice before me. Either I 'deign' and retrain myself to do .NET or I move on and take up another opportunity around Java. Looking at following reasons, I picked up former option.

• It was an unnerving thought to step out again and hunt for a competitive employment within such a short span of time. I was barely about two months old into this new job!


• What the heck! I told myself, ".NET is not much different than J2EE in spirit and application". I do not look at it condescendingly, simply because it was pioneered and, being propelled by M$ in a bid to counter growing popularity of Java and pull in some mindshare towards windows as a service oriented platform for next generation Enterprise Applications.
  I saw an opportunity to learn and know more about this new technology. This would certainly complement my knowledge of Enterprise Applications. After all, I want to be a part of a team, that would define and create next generation of Enterprise Architectures some day. Knowledge of all such competing technologies would only take this pursuit several steps closer to that ultimate goal.


• Through all these years in IT I have realized that, as you grow up in the career, programming languages and platforms do not matter much, really. The fundamental problems of computer science like memory management, scheduling, process execution, I/O and so on remain same. Only ways to abstract, encapsulate and solve them through algorithms and data structures change. Any IT professional worth his salt, should spot and value these patterns, irrespective of Java or .NET.
  


• I could not overlook the fact, that, my employer is going to fund for my .NET knowledge acquisition :-)
  

So, here I am! Learning .NET and looking at C# from a Java Developer's Perspective and reading C# for Java developers.

From the first look, C# naming conventions appeared little weird. EverythingStartsWithCapital, be it a TypeName or a MethodName(), confusing you to think whether you are looking at a Class or an Operation. However, I am training my eyes to look at many more of them, with ease.

Cheers,