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Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:14:07 -0700
From: Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>
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Subject: Re: Programming Career
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On 4/27/2012 5:47 AM, arnuld wrote:
> I do programming on Linux and live in 2nd corner of the country (when my
> home is in another quite far corner) just because I got the system
> programming job in Linux.  Now what if my manager is saying that I have
> to work on some Java project for half an year on Windows. Thats OOP and
> application programming, not related to my 4 years of work experience.
>
>
> I want to work on Linux/UNIX/BSD/*NIX only and do system programming. I
> am willing to work on any other language like Haskell/Caml/Ruby/Python
> etc as they belong to a sharing-community and they are cross-platform and
> increase the skill of programming. but Windows based work .. is no no for
> me. I don't want to put Java on Resume, rather I will put half an year
> reading Richard Stevens books.
>
> I want to decline his authoritative request. What would do you in my
> situation ? Whats your view on this ?

I would think *very* carefully before rejecting such a request.

Suppose a manager sees a shift in future work such that, at times, there
will too much *NIX system programming capacity and too little
Java-on-Windows capacity.

One choice would be to lay off one or more pure *NIX system programmers
and hire either Java programmers or programmers who can do both.
Assigning a *NIX system programmer to a Java project, trusting the
programmer to get up to speed on Java, seems much more responsible.

More generally, the worst career mistake a programmer can make is to
fall in love with a technology. I'm afraid it may have already happened
to you, very early in your career.

Four years into my career, all I had done was applications programming,
in assembly language, for NCR Century computers. I was very good at it,
and had accumulated a lot of related skills and knowledge, but I don't
think I would have had much of a career if I had fallen in love with
that technology combination, and refused to do anything else.

Patricia