# Had Ruby interview, considering J2ME as well **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [July 25, 2006, 2:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/had-ruby-interview-considering-j2me-as-well/99712 "2006-07-25T02:41:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 2:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/had-ruby-interview-considering-j2me-as-well/99712/1 "2006-07-25T02:41:11Z")
I had sent a contractor the following message (below). They are going to have J2ME training and they say they help with job placement for J2ME, I might like suggestions on how to determine if I should take their training as it will not be free, but they haven’t told me he cost yet. Any other comments regarding my job search would be welcome. I have done some Java programming, and have studied the Java certification manual. However, I had gotten interested in Ruby on Rails programming and have been working on a Rails projecton my laptop. Ruby appeals to me for a number of reasons. However, it somewhat new and there are less job opportunities using Ruby. I had an interview for a Ruby on Rails job last week, and have not heard back and there is a limited number of related job postings I have found. I am particularly interested in J2ME because I have found that the J2EE package is such a huge API and I am not sure if it really appeals to me or not. Many Ruby programmer advocates have been very critical of J2EE. I also have the Sun Certified Web D. Component study guide and found it to be somewhat cumbersome where there is just allot of infrastructure and administration involved, and I seem to be more motivated by focusing more on programming and studying languages and simpler APIs etc. Thus, I am very interested in studying J2ME. ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 3:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/had-ruby-interview-considering-j2me-as-well/99712/2 "2006-07-25T03:43:39Z")
What is your primary motivation for choosing a language? Is it prevalence in the job market? If so then from what I have heard there should be an increasing demand for Rails developers, although I don’t sample the market currently so I wouldn’t have a tangible idea. Learning Rails and then buidling upon that to further get familiar with Ruby shouldn’t be that huge of an undertaking. Independently you should be able to get basic practical understanding under your belt in a couple of months on the side. But if you aren’t seeing many job postings in your area for Rails developers then perhaps the selft taught route might be more for your own enrichment. But if you are looking for the most common languages in the job market I would imagine C#, C++, and Java would be the ones to tackle. You are correct in that the J2EE API is huge. If you get the basics of Java in your head then diving into the various API of J2EE, J2SE, J2ME, etc. isn’t out of the question. It’s not like a J2EE developer has everything memorized. The API documentation is someone’s right arm in a lot of cases working with Java. That’s why someone joked that the “Java in a Nutshell” book that O’Reilly prints is over 1,000 pages long! It actually is. Wow. Ick 🙂 If you do learn Java, then moving over and learning C++ or C# isn’t a huge departure. It’s kind of like someone who knows Ruby jumping into Python. Emphasis on “kind of like” I guess. At least the languages are related enough so it’s not a quantum leap like learning Lisp and then jumping into BASIC. With J2ME the market should be there. Embedded application develop seems to be all the rage with all of the smartphones, PDA’s, etc. saturing that market. Plus all of the other devices that run Java which are even smaller and more “dumbed down.” Microsoft has their Pocket .NET Framework (or whatever they are calling it this week) so you could conceivably code something is C# and deploy it on Windows Mobile. Plus it seems as if they are starting to corner the PDA/Smartphone OS market. For me I never restricted myself to learning just one language. But I am more of a hobbyist too… ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 2:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/had-ruby-interview-considering-j2me-as-well/99712/3 "2006-07-25T14:06:10Z")
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote: > I don’t feel motivated to write a J2EE app on my > laptop in order to learn J2EE. I like to read books, but ultimately I > feel I need to write code to be able to comfortably put something on my > resume. […] Without the > motivation to write J2EE code on my own, I’m probably caught in catch > 22. I can empathize with you. There was a mobile app I was trying to deploy on Palm OS PDA’s and the best vehicle for this that I found was J2ME. So I tried to learn the ins and outs of this Java implementation. First by reading books and online documentation. But that can only get you so far. Especially for all of the tedious ins and outs of a Java API doc set 🙂 Ultimately I needed to write some smaller, less ambitious test programs using it to get hands-on experience. Without that area my practical knowledge of J2ME wasn’t complete. And I just couldn’t make myself do it. Since this wasn’t 100% necessary to port the mobile app over to Palm OS I just wound up settling for an app that ran on Windows Mobile and Embedded Linux mobile platforms. I run into similar situations with Smalltalk. There were a couple of mockups of applications I was working on that I completed using Dolphin Smalltalk. They have very nice tie-ins with Windows and make it easy to tap into existing API’s such as ActiveX components. But I couldn’t make the leap of faith to start writing a bunch of sample programs using Smalltalk to get the required hands-on. I have perhaps 8 Smalltalk books and have studied the syntax and basic classes from here 'til doomsday. But without the discpline to write test code on it my knowledge isn’t practical. Maybe this means that I just like Ruby better and unless I’m forced to use an alternative language I can’t make myself 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/4bbf92/32.png) [@unknown](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/unknown)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2006, 11:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/had-ruby-interview-considering-j2me-as-well/99712/4 "2006-07-25T11:15:58Z")
gregarican wrote: > There is not just one reason. I do need a job however. I have a ruby project I have been working on on my laptop. > But if you are looking for the most common languages in the job market > I would imagine C#, C++, and Java would be the ones to tackle. You are > correct in that the J2EE API is huge. If you get the basics of Java in > your head then diving into the various API of J2EE, J2SE, J2ME, etc. > isn’t out of the question. It’s not like a J2EE developer has > everything memorized. The API documentation is someone’s right arm in a > lot of cases working with Java. That’s why someone joked that the “Java > in a Nutshell” book that O’Reilly prints is over 1,000 pages long! It > actually is. Wow. Ick 🙂 I have done some java programming. I have done C++ for 10 years, and Perl for 2 or 3 years. I don’t feel motivated to write a J2EE app on my laptop in order to learn J2EE. I like to read books, but ultimately I feel I need to write code to be able to comfortably put something on my resume. If someone wants to hire me to write enterprise beans or something in J2EE I would probably be happy with that, but if I don’t have the experience they may not want to hire me. Without the motivation to write J2EE code on my own, I’m probably caught in catch 22. > If you do learn Java, then moving over and learning C++ or C# isn’t a > huge departure. It’s kind of like someone who knows Ruby jumping into > Python. Emphasis on “kind of like” I guess. At least the languages are > related enough so it’s not a quantum leap like learning Lisp and then > jumping into BASIC. > am more of a hobbyist too… I focus on different languages at different times, but even one language can take allot of time to learn well. Python sounds interesting, not sure I’d care for C#, or .net.