I became a 100% Domino developer straight out of Uni - joined a company, spend 3 months getting a CLP and stayed with it for about 6 years. About 6 years ago I realised Domino would not be around forever and slowly switched to Java.
First I had a Domino job with some Java, then a job with Java and some Domino and now I work 100% with Java, mainly web based. It was not a hard transition but it did take time.
It was hard to give up what was my #1 skill but however much I liked Domino I had to let go.
One of the great things about being a Domino developer though is that you do know a reasonable range of web technologies already. I also found that as a Domino developer I was used to defining and writing whole systems which is more unusual in the Java world but a useful skill to have.
What I had to brush up on through was things like automated testing, source code management, object orientated design etc. as in my Domino world these things were little known.
The thing I miss about Domino is its completeness, security, db, email, multiple language support, scheduled agents, web framework etc in one box. In the Java world each of these things is taken care of by hundreds of different projects and most of the time is spent trying to decide what to use and how to glue it together.
The other day I did do some quick maintenance of some ASP classic code though. ASP Classic ~= VB ~= LotusScript. I feel lucky I don't have to touch that sort of language often any more :)
I became a 100% Domino developer straight out of Uni - joined a company, spend 3 months getting a CLP and stayed with it for about 6 years. About 6 years ago I realised Domino would not be around forever and slowly switched to Java.
First I had a Domino job with some Java, then a job with Java and some Domino and now I work 100% with Java, mainly web based. It was not a hard transition but it did take time.
It was hard to give up what was my #1 skill but however much I liked Domino I had to let go.
One of the great things about being a Domino developer though is that you do know a reasonable range of web technologies already. I also found that as a Domino developer I was used to defining and writing whole systems which is more unusual in the Java world but a useful skill to have.
What I had to brush up on through was things like automated testing, source code management, object orientated design etc. as in my Domino world these things were little known.
The thing I miss about Domino is its completeness, security, db, email, multiple language support, scheduled agents, web framework etc in one box. In the Java world each of these things is taken care of by hundreds of different projects and most of the time is spent trying to decide what to use and how to glue it together.
The other day I did do some quick maintenance of some ASP classic code though. ASP Classic ~= VB ~= LotusScript. I feel lucky I don't have to touch that sort of language often any more :)