I'm a physics phd with little actual programming experience. I've always liked programming and played around with Basic and Pascal (also VB and Delphi) as a teen, but the largest actual project I completed was an assignement for the introductory computer science class in university where I wrote a nice little program (about 1500 lines of pascal) to display functions of 2 variables in 3D. I've had also a couple other projects of a few hundred lines range, but during my phd I didn't have (or take) the time to program more (string theory is hard guys!), beside playing around with ruby.

Now I've decided that I'm more interested in programming than in physics and started to learn Java (hoping to pass the certification exam next week) and OO design. Still, I have trouble deciding on what to focus next (Java EE? Web development? algorithms and C programming?) in order to maximize my employement chances.

Bear in mind that I'm aiming (mostly) at the swedish job market and that I'm 30 years old.

So for the questions:

• Do you think that I have any chances to start and make a career in IT and programming coming from physics?

• What would be the best strategy to maximize my value in the field?

• Do you have suggestions as to where my physics background might be useful?