I have been a professional programmer for more than 30 years, and have chosen a career path involving hands-on programming. Programming is something that I love, and I take great pride in the fact that I have continued to keep up to date with current technology. Projects on which I have worked include large enterprise projects as well as smaller desktop programs.

The problem I am facing is that I do not have any web-based experience other than some web services. Most of the jobs now available have some web component.

I have now been out of work for a year and a half, and have been keeping busy by studying technology that will bridge that gap: CSS, Java Script, JQuery, and Ruby on Rails; AJAX is next.

Hiring managers give no consideration whatsoever to the studying that I have been doing. I know that I cannot compete at a senior software level, but companies will not hire someone with my experience at a more junior level. Is there any way to break out of this Catch 22?