How much sense does it make for a veteran .Net developer to move to ROR professionally?

Posted by SharePoint Newbie on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by SharePoint Newbie
Published on 2011-01-13T16:24:32Z Indexed on 2011/01/13 16:59 UTC
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Hi,

I consider myself a moderately skilled (definitely not stupid) .Net developer. Over the past 5 years I've been working with ASP.Net, ASP.Net MVC, SharePoint, WPF, Silverlight, RDBMS (SQL Server and Oracle). I maintain/contribute a couple of .Net OSS. I've also picked up F# and Haskell over the previous year.

I am currently employed at one of the better (best) software firms out there and would surely love to continue working here. However over the past 6 months opportunities in .Net have mostly dried up and all new work is headed towards ROR (and whatever is left towards Java).

I have never been apprehensive about learning a new stack/language for fun and have previously picked up Haskell and Python in my free time. I am however apprehensive as to what impact moving to a new entirely different stack would have on my career.

What would you do:

  • Change jobs if you don't find anything on .Net soon.
  • Try out the ROR stack for some time. If you find that its not your cup of tea, move back. (How would this impact my career and job opportunities in the longer run?)

Also it would be very helpful if there are any ASP.Net MVC folks who have switched over to ROR professionally who can share their experiences.

Edit: I have not done any development on a *nix box before. I've however used Ubuntu for fun and games.

Sorry if this sounds subjective.

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