Hi Daniel,

I can relate to your request, having been through this process myself!

Sometime ago I decided I wanted to work with Smalltalk. I was coming from a COBOL, RPG, Database background. 

I just started "doing it" at home and knocking on doors. One year later (after my wife thought "I'd get over it, get bored, and go and get a normal job using a normal language") I was still "doing it" and knocking on doors. 

The problem was the "Catch-22" of must have paid on the job commercial experience using Smalltalk. After two years of doing this I thought I would have had more than enough experience, but the Catch-22 still held. Undaunted, and as I really liked using Smalltalk, I delved deeper and deeper into the Smalltalk system - I suspect displaying this knowledge might have scared some of my prospective employers off!

After quite a few rebuffs I got my "lucky break". It involved working away from home and, ironically, teaching Smalltalk to very unmotivated "old school" people. But hey, it went on the CV and the Catch-22 was broken. Unfortunately at this time my prediction of Smalltalk's increasing popularity over C++ didn't come true due to a certain language called Java exploding on the internet (which, I've heard the originator based his ideas on, but was told to make the syntax C++ like). Smalltalk had missed its window of opportunity.

That said, I'm working in New Zealand on a project in the UK using Smalltalk and have done quite a lot of Smalltalk gigs!

However once this project finishes, I suspect I'll be back in the same position, breaking the Catch-22 of Java. Oh it's great to live on the technological treadmill :)

My advice - keep "doing it" and keep knocking on doors.

Your project sounds interesting - go with that? (can you tell us more?).

Good luck,

Stewart






----------
From:  Daniel
Sent:  08 August 2001 09:38
To:  squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
Subject:  Help! Unemployed

	I have recently been laid off after 2 years of work. While my work
dealt mostly with Java, J2EE and C, I would love a chance to make a
living at SmallTalk programming.

	My last employer had nothing in the way of tools to support our Java
development. Emacs and Println were our debuggers. The tools that you
get for free in SmallTalk I sorely missed while working with Java.

	Can anyone help me? Does anyone know the best way to go about this?

	I have 2 years of OOAD experience while working with Java, and I've
used SmallTalk for personal projects. While I don't know anything about
Envy, or other 3rd party SmallTalk toolsets, I am a quick learner.

	Can someone help me make my dream come true?  <:)

	Daniel Joyce