From php to java developer

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debonair

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I have been a php developer for about four years now and am fluent in a number of php frameworks and would like to know how i could jump ship and get into java development. Anyone who has done this recently? any thoughts?
 
Why the need to change to java? there is still a high demand for php developers around. not sure about how you could jump ship but id say move into C# :)
 
Yeah, PHP is bigggg especially in Cape Town. I'm currently in the job market and I'm suprised at how many there are. Don't write PHP off but its a good thing to compliment it with Java and even look at C# and Python.

Personally I'm going to work on C# skills (I've got 5yrs PHP experience)
 
I have always wanted to be a Java developer, they seem to be paid more than php devs with the same number of years of experience and their work is not limited to web development.
Java is a useful language to know. I think that its even better than C#...
 
debonair said:
I have always wanted to be a Java developer, they seem to be paid more than php devs with the same number of years of experience and their work is not limited to web development.
Java is a useful language to know. I think that its even better than C#...
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Dont do JAVA because of the percieved salary expectations. The only time I see salary descrepencies is at junior level, as soon as you go senior, then salaries are on par and you get paid for your skills, not for your language of choice. Keep in mind that your a year away from senior PHP level but you know want to restart the junior 5 year life-cycle as a Java developer.

If its about money, then get a degree - a BSc graduate that only know Turbo Pascal will always earn more money at a Junior level than his coding guru counterpart!
 
Oh, and Java developers are actually the cheapest to use in any development enviroment, reason why so many backends where written in Java. Don't think that all Java developers take home R50K plus a month, many are in the R15-R20K range.

Also employers are looking for OS skills, Windows & Linux, and version control skills. As a PHP developer you also need to focus on Apache & IIS deployment and maintenance.
 
Get to a senior php dev position, learn java too... Maybe learn something like C#, it's actually a really good language. Good to know multiple languages, IDE's etc, gives you a better idea of what each has to offer.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Dont do JAVA because of the percieved salary expectations. The only time I see salary descrepencies is at junior level, as soon as you go senior, then salaries are on par and you get paid for your skills, not for your language of choice. Keep in mind that your a year away from senior PHP level but you know want to restart the junior 5 year life-cycle as a Java developer.

If its about money, then get a degree - a BSc graduate that only know Turbo Pascal will always earn more money at a Junior level than his coding guru counterpart!
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I think you are right there, and yes I would not want to go through the junior cycle again. I was hoping to get recognition for my PHP experience because the concepts are the same.
 
Gnome said:
Nope. Not really. Your PHP experience is mostly useless in Java.

Rather go for C# there your PHP experience will be of use.
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Think he meant coding foundations. Also OOP in PHP is possible but not as pretty :) or used as much (Surprised that everytime I tell someone I'm a PHP developer they ask if I know how to use Objects in PHP)
 
Would that make you a phava developer? The syntax is vastly different but not complex to understand. Get eclipse and dl a bunch of examples, and you should be fine :)
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Think he meant coding foundations. Also OOP in PHP is possible but not as pretty :) or used as much (Surprised that everytime I tell someone I'm a PHP developer they ask if I know how to use Objects in PHP)
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I understand but you can be an awesome Java developer and have no idea how to do a Java server-side application. Unlike PHP and C#, Java has a set of accepted standards. The standards are defined in either Java standard edition, Java enterprise edition and Java mobile edition. Those standards are then used by companies to create Java compatible technologies (eg. Tomcat is a Java EE JDK5 certified application server, Glassfish Java EE JDK6, etc.)

Fact is knowing how to program is pretty much the easiest part because you need to understand the Java specifications (Java EE for web-development but also Java SE). Once that is done you know enough to be about 5years behind the industry and you need to study a few frameworks. All in all quite a bit of work and none of it anything like PHP or C# (although some C# developers have tried porting many of the technologies but because of a lack of standards the projects don't fair well).

It's hard to explain but a Java developer would know what I meant.

Even an experienced Java developer starts over every time he/she switches jobs. Because Java relies on standards there are SO many frameworks (implementing the various specifications) and ways to do things that every company and individual has their way. Soon as you start at a company you spend the first month just learning the Java technologies they use.

As an example, Java has a set of specifications for a portal, but it isn't an implementation. There are quite a few implementations (not created by Sun/Oracle): JBoss, IBM Portal, Liferay Portal, etc. Each one is a huge piece of software implementing the specifications but very different from each other. Having experience in one will definitely help in the other but you won't just "jump right in"
 
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Linuc said:
+1 for PHP and C#. The need for Java developers are diminishing rapidly.
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Not really. Financial industry (eg. all financial services providers) use Java. Apart from that Twitter is moving completely from Ruby on Rails to Java with 3x speed increase. Plenty of very large sites run on Java.

Granted there are quite a few large sites that run on PHP also (in the front end at least).

Same can't be said of C# haven't heard of any large .NET applications (and doubt I will soon)

Java is considered an enterprise solution (large applications) hence the reason not many SA companies use it (not high enough load to justify the expertise required) with the exception of the financial providers that absolutely cannot have downtime and must handle large load with scaling options and so forth.
 
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Any company running server platforms other than those from Microsoft would be also be using applications NOT written in a .Net language and there's a good chance those applications would be written in Java (assuming a backend service).

In terms of salaries, there are many factors other than your language and framework that affect it. What I do know is that when you're working on large mission critical server systems where high performance and reliability are not negotiable, the likelihood that .Net is being used for such systems is slim. This isn't meant to slander .Net, I've worked in both C# and Java for some time and love both. But those more complex and bigger systems can mean more skill and experience is developed at a quicker pace and that can only lead to good things.
 
stevenv said:
How is PHP more beneficial when switching to C# than when switching to Java?
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As I said, PHP knowledge is useless in Java web-development.

And .NET is far less complex than Java and lack many of the technologies that Java offer. Not to mention that you don't really have much choice in .NET, you do the MS way, in Java many frameworks and platforms exist.

It is easier to move to .NET than to Java from PHP. So yeah, you are right, probably not "more" beneficial, just easier. Some of the knowledge will undoubtedly help in both worlds (eg. Javascript, HTML, etc.)
 
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