>>Have you guys taken a look at what Java is doing these days. Netbeans 6.0 is looking very nice indeed. It's free and it's a real match to what VS is doing. As far as jobs 2-3 to 1 .net job
>>Johnf
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>It is always a good idea to keep your eye on the job market! Working in the technology field you can be obsolete tomorrow or even today!
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>I was in the original Java Users group at Sun Microsystems in Palo Alto. That was about 13 years ago more or less. There was a guy giving a demo from the latest greatest version of Java. As he said, "The only problem is it will not work with any broswer"! :)
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>The last time I went to a job fair was in April of 2000. I was at the Santa Clara Convention Center and they had many computers for people to search for employment. I found the following:
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>Java job offerings: 1608
>Microsoft offerings: 2
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>Employers had a need for someone with VB 6 experience and another listing for NT4.
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>I have been at my present place of employment for almost eight years and have not kept up with what the job market is doing. I hope to retire within the coming weeks or months as the case may be. My advice is to keep your resume and skill set up to date, and go for it! The name of the game is to survive. Never become complacent or comfortable with your place of employment. Here today gone tomorrow. :)

From what I've seen it is always a challenge to see what particular subrelease of Java works properly with what particular patch version of a particular browser.

That certainly kept up the number of Java jobs at one of my last major contractors. They had 11 Java developers at their peak. They replaced tham with 3 ASP.Net developers who completely rewrote their web sites to make them faster, far less buggy, and much easier to maintain.