It was 2009, the world was depressed, so was everyone around me. The times were bad, job were few and too many applicants. Things were more difficult for me, as I was very good at C++ but everyone wanted a Java developer. Service based industry was booming in India.

So when a friend asked be if you want to join as s java fresher, I said sure. How hard can java be, right? And I was correct, I studied 1 night before the exam, and cracked the interview next morning.

Though I didn't do any work at the job, as the project wasn't awarded to my company, but I learned that the project was in a framework called ATG(now called Oracle Commerce). I talked to other people around in the office on other projects and came to know this was a really high paying framework. ATG(now called Oracle Commerce) is used to develop B2B and B2C e-commerce applications. It pioneered the commerce implementation space.

There were no public documentations available, as is the case with most closed(owned by private orgs.) frameworks. I hustled around and got my self the documentation from others in the office. After some bouncing around for almost 10 months, I came to the conclusion that I need to get serious about this framework.

I starting reading the documentation and within 2 months got the job. I work in ATG(now called Oracle Commerce), for almost 9-10 years, worked on some really big projects.

Everything was going fine, then Oracle bought ATG, released some great features and then cloud happened. ATG was the example of a monolith. Though it is a great framework and instead of move it to micro-services, Oracle decided to make a worst version of ATG on cloud. Everyone hated it. Then came the news that there will be no new version of ATG released. All the big e-commerce clients needs to look for another alternative.

Now I have got 2 choices, either learn Spring and go to any service based companies that are moving their client's ATG based e-comm to Spring based Micro-Services or Study hard and go to a product based organization.

I choose option 2 as the monitory return is higher in product based organizations and the work is fun and challenging.

I am taking this second chance to become a great software engineer.

I will be documenting my journey of my preparation and topics I am learning

--yadav