Hello,
I am a somewhat recent college graduate (bachelor's completed four years ago), and I consider myself as a junior level developer still. I have been exposed to various areas in the IT/development world, and a stable
Java development position has always eluded me (always getting pulled into other areas like
testing, database development, project contract losses causing issues etc.). Now I have ended up in a position where I am to develop a new web-app version of a small (but not that small) desktop server application using the .net framework (it was not my decision to use this technology). What I want to know is, would it be a good idea to stick with this position? I have never been tasked with so much responsibility, especially without a mentor (no one on this project, including me, knows .NET development), so I am nervous, especially since I am learning things on my own. On one hand, I think this is a great learning opportunity to create an application from scratch, but on the other hand, I am hesitant because my career goal is to grow as a Java developer. As I learn more about .net MVC development and C#, I am seeing that many of the concepts could be transferable to Java web development (if my understanding is correct), so this worry is becoming less of an issue, but what I am worried about is whether I am unknowingly getting too far off the Java path (
EJB, Spring, Hibernate, etc), losing time by developing in a different platform. The Java experience I have professionally is limited, so even though I have been in the working world for 4 years, I feel I am falling behind getting some kind of depth. My Java now-a-days is limited to studying for the higher level certifications, and I don't know how useful they are going to be a few months down the road.
Thank you for reading the long post, and I appreciate any input.