Hi Scott (et al.),
A couple of points:
Firstly, I don't think you have to worry (in the short to medium term) about WO's status. It is a part of Apple's Xcode development platform now and I see it becoming a more and more significant component as time goes on (and the world becomes even more Web centric). That said, and as others have implied, it seems that development of WO itself isn't moving forward very fast at the moment. This is mostly because WO is still best-of-breed (and far ahead in certain areas, notably the DirectTo* technologies), but also because it's not Apple's primary business focus.
Secondly, and I don't want to scare you off, but you should be aware that there is a really significant learning curve associated with object orientation, the Java programming language, the Java platform, the WebObjects platform, the WebObjects development tools. It takes significant amount of time to really understand each of these areas. The time to ramp up to being a competent, knowledgeable, and skilled WO developer from you position is usually (IMHO) measured in years not months. So don't expect quick results (or at least good results quickly), and make sure you are in it for the long haul.
That said, if you do choose to go down the path of learning OO, Java, WO, it is probably the finest path you could choose for Web development (Cocoa Objective-C being the best for desktop development). WO particularly, is one of the most well designed and thought-out platforms and development environments (and the Xcode IDE is not too bad as well - that said, I would also learn to use the Eclipse IDE and WOLips). If you stay the distance it will put you in a very good position to do any OO, Java, Enterprise, or Web development with any other technology (pretty much).
Good luck with whatever you choose to do!
Cheers, Ashley.
-- Ashley Aitken Perth, Western Australia mrhatken at mac dot com Skype Name: MrHatken (GMT + 8 Hours!)
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