Ask HN: Enterprise Java guy needs advice on what to transition to

This should get you away from the overengineering that Java seems to attract and there are plenty of Rails jobs out there (certainly more than there are Grails jobs anyway).

Whilst you are at it pick up some new technologies such as mongodb.

It would be good for your soul (and skill as a programmer) to try something new, completely new. You could of course also learn ObjectiveC++ and become an iPhone developer. Whatever you pick make sure that it puts fear in your heart, something that will challenge you. A mountain to climb rather than molehill.

I don't really see why you have to bind yourself so hard to a language/platform/whatever. You don't have to be a "Java programmer" or a "Python programmer". Instead aim to become someone who can move around and choose whatever is best for the job, or whatever the job might require. In the end it's just programming, different types of programming sure but never forget that you're basically doing the same thing in a different way. When you see that you realize languages are just tools for you to use, not the other way around.

The first step IMO would be to expand your horizon, see what else is out there. Try out the exotic languages you see everyone rave about, give Python a blast or drive Ruby for a while. Do things in Erlang or Haskell just because it's different from Java and mix web development with low level or simply make a game or a program you've always needed.

When you know what's out there, when you've gotten your feet wet, then you can focus in on something a bit more. The thing that has kept my interest in programming alive is I've always done what's fun, and I can only imagine that's even more important for someone with 10+ in the business actually working with it. So choose something you feel is fun, oddly for me the funniest things are the new and different stuff (Haskell for example).

Long story short: Don't be an "X programmer", be a "programmer" and go where the fun is!

Best of luck to you.

In addition to reusing my previous expertise, there are four thing I really like about it:

* Convention over Configuration makes things so much simpler * Groovy Language has a lot of great features, allowing for much more concise code (though it does take some time to get used to dynamic typing) * Plugin ecosystem - over 500 plugins on various topics allow you to get things done much quicker. The plugin architecture is wonderful and allows you to compose your from reusable blocks, which could have their own UI. Best actual (as oppoed to theoretical) code reusability I've ever seen * GORM (object relational mapper) is a thing of beauty. It's fairly implementation-agnostic, so you can use it with Relational DBs, switch to Mongo or Reddis as the persistence backend fairly easily.

Definitely recommend you check it out. In terms of jobs, it's not as big of a community as Java yet, but I definitely see many jobs advertising those skills.

You'll get a fun development environment, a less formal language. The big plus for you is that JRuby has wonderful Java integration, so you'll be able to use all the Java libraries and infrastructure you've learnt over the years where they make sense for your project.