From: gregarican <greg.kujawa@...>
Date: 2006-07-25T21:05:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Had Ruby interview, considering J2ME as well ...


surfunbear@yahoo.com 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 :-)