This is all going to be purely anecdotal, of course (and note that I am not in a tech hub or even any city, to my great unhappiness): I started out with Ruby, and I feel like I came in during “peak Rails”. Trying to find another Rails job is extremely challenging because of the huge glut of beginner-intermediate Rails developers, and it has gone mainstream enough that it’s not really a useful signal of whether it’s an employer that’s worth your time. I think Ruby’s future is basically that of Java. Actually, I’m slightly more optimistic about Java.
If I were starting all over from scratch today, AND if I had a friend or mentor that could help me with questions when I was stuck, I’d go straight for Clojure. The Clojure community is still very small, but really excited about newcomers. The reason I mention the necessity of some kind of mentor is that Clojure, as opposed to Ruby or Javascript, still has so many beginner pains that it really helps to have someone steer you in the right direction (Clojure errors are notoriously unhelpful and it doesn’t just work “out of the box” like Rails does). The Clojure groups are all small enough that you can join in and not be lost, but there seems to be vastly more Clojure dev positions than people to fill them. These aren’t jobs you’ll find listed on StackOverflow or LinkedIn—they’re passed around through word of mouth. But if you are a respectful community member, people seem overwhelmingly happy to help you. (Note that I haven’t been able to land one of these Clojure jobs yet, but I imagine a more talented programmer than me would be able to do so quite quickly.)
I imagine there are other languages like Clojure, that are small but full of opportunity. I’m just not part of them, so I can’t comment on what’s there. Scala seems like it might be similar.
Take this with a grain of salt, as I don’t have access to any sort of real-life programming community. This has just been my experience with my interactions online. As others have said, bootcamps are an appealing option if that’s something that’s available to you.
This is all going to be purely anecdotal, of course (and note that I am not in a tech hub or even any city, to my great unhappiness): I started out with Ruby, and I feel like I came in during “peak Rails”. Trying to find another Rails job is extremely challenging because of the huge glut of beginner-intermediate Rails developers, and it has gone mainstream enough that it’s not really a useful signal of whether it’s an employer that’s worth your time. I think Ruby’s future is basically that of Java. Actually, I’m slightly more optimistic about Java.
If I were starting all over from scratch today, AND if I had a friend or mentor that could help me with questions when I was stuck, I’d go straight for Clojure. The Clojure community is still very small, but really excited about newcomers. The reason I mention the necessity of some kind of mentor is that Clojure, as opposed to Ruby or Javascript, still has so many beginner pains that it really helps to have someone steer you in the right direction (Clojure errors are notoriously unhelpful and it doesn’t just work “out of the box” like Rails does). The Clojure groups are all small enough that you can join in and not be lost, but there seems to be vastly more Clojure dev positions than people to fill them. These aren’t jobs you’ll find listed on StackOverflow or LinkedIn—they’re passed around through word of mouth. But if you are a respectful community member, people seem overwhelmingly happy to help you. (Note that I haven’t been able to land one of these Clojure jobs yet, but I imagine a more talented programmer than me would be able to do so quite quickly.)
I imagine there are other languages like Clojure, that are small but full of opportunity. I’m just not part of them, so I can’t comment on what’s there. Scala seems like it might be similar.
Take this with a grain of salt, as I don’t have access to any sort of real-life programming community. This has just been my experience with my interactions online. As others have said, bootcamps are an appealing option if that’s something that’s available to you.