[ch4s3]

I agree that picking a skill the market needs is sound advice, but I have a minor quibble here. I think self taught devs shouldn't focus on Java as an on-ramp into the job market, because it places them in direct competition with recent CS grads who learned Java in school, and with low cost offshore shops. I doubt you want to be in the low end (skill wise) of that market. Now, being well versed in Scala, Angular, or various flavors of SQL would be a solid way to differentiate while still targeting industry needs, IMO.

[Larrikin]

I prefer Kotlin and scala over Java and feel they'll eventually overtake most use cases for Java. But there's just so much more information out there for learning Java. If you know Java, it's just much easier to pick up all the other JVM languages. You can be productive but not idiomatic in Kotlin in a couple weeks. I continue to recommend to friends to learn java first, despite never using it when I have a choice.

[ch4s3]

From a foundations perspective, that makes sense. My comment was more about marketability of skills. I tend to tell people to learn Python or Ruby first, because there's a wealth of material, jobs (once you're good), low barrier to entry, and both languages are reasonably well designed.

[brightball]

That is a worthwhile insight IMO.

[ch4s3]

Maybe, it was a bit off the cuff, and I'd need to think more about it and look at some actually employment and pay data to have a better sense of the validity of the claim. However, I think in general looking for a exploitable niche is a solid plan.

[brightball]

I'd support the notion entirely though. There are so many Enterprise Java jobs that have the 5 years of experience qualifier that it's a significant impediment for a self-taught.

I ended up seeing both sides of this - I taught myself PHP and MySQL for a project I worked on for 3 years of college in my spare time...while I was learning Java and going through the CS program.

When I came out, oddly enough I ended up getting a PHP job despite spending a lot of time "wanting" a Java job. Definitely got to experience both sides of that coin.

[ch4s3]

I had a similar experience with Ruby.