Your Choice of Career?

[FourScience]

Hey all,
Not a support question... I'm looking for some career advice. There's a lot of techies in sK and I figure I'd check to see what people have to say about something. My boss has given me the freedom to choose my area of software development and I am trying to figure out what I will do in the near future. The s/w dev may be web development, desktop applications, distributed applications, etc., pretty much anything that requires a "programmer", just nothing really niche (like game programming). It's a semi-permanent kind of choice, as I will never be limited to what I pursue, as I'll have a lot of small projects and I can vary some of them beyond my immediate choice.

I have been considering moving into .Net, J2EE, Python-based development, and other things alike. Web programming seems to be where a lot of work is abound presently. I would be taking on a lot of contract-based projects and working in a small team or independently.

My background is grounded in a typical computer science undergrad program. I have experience in Java mostly, but I've completed only the beginnings of a J2EE app. I've done more complete programs in C/C++, mostly in game projects. I am picking up Python for another work-related project that will be ongoing over the summer.

I am partly looking for what will make me most markettable (aka well-paid) and valuable to my present company (i.e., can handle well-paying projects). My company is very small, but we have a lot of various IT-needy clients. I already have some ideas to begin with, but I would really like to see if anyone around here can recommend certain languages/areas that they have enjoyed working with. I hate boring projects that are either too easy or too dead-end to gain re-usable skills. One of my ideas was to pick up .Net and do a project or two in that, and then do some J2EE work (or vice versa). I don't want to be a jack-of-all trades as much as I want to be knowledgable in an area rather than specific technologies.

Any thoughts?  

[sK_Cookie]

well web is where is it at right now.  J2EE is nice for very large firms but very few java shops exist on the large scale.  Most .NET is used right now.  But both are fairly simple once you know the basics.  If you go the .NET way you will be dealing with mostly vb.net, but the .NET framework supports 16 languages currently including java, javascript, vbscript, vb.net, c, c#, and many many more.  I suggest looking at the pros and cons of each and then deciding what you think will make you most marketable, personally I went .NET.