Thomas,

I'll make a speech for those lurking who might operate on your First rule premise.

< speech >
Some day your employer may no longer be a part of your life. Make sure you have a repertoire of saleable skills, including business knowledge such as issues associated with medical data, appropriate for your area, or be willing to relocate!
< /speech >


>>So, if you were thinking about learning a new tool to jump to if it came to that, what would it be? Why?
>
>First rule: (Why:) The development tool I use is the one that I am paid to use. When my employer says “Tom, here is a project”. I am told what tool to use and if I have to learn I do so.
>
>My Reality – I have been doing a lot of Visual Interdev development (no DTC’s) ASP, etc. with SQL Server, along with Visual Basic. Would you believe – even cleaning up several Access projects after the developers left. The Access crap is going into ASP. That pays the bills and helps put my son and daughter through college.
>
>Reality that surrounds me (San Francisco Bay Area) – learn Java – the vast majority of positions for software development in this area use Java. SQL Server and Oracle are important tools to be familiar with.
>
>Only the future knows what tools will be popular and .NET could be interesting.
>
>Tom