JAVA and other langauges

[punisa]

Hello, recently I've been hunting for a new job. I was surprised at the amount of positions that listed JAVA, .NET and C++ as mandatory skills.
I have cca 7-8 year of experience in PHP, Mysql, Flash and have never experienced a situation that I could not produce something involving only these languages/databases.

What exactly would I gain if I dig into learning these new skills?
Regarding web, the only Java applet I've seen being used recently is a web chat application. Something that I have done many times using Ajax.

I'm not trying to discredit any of these languages, just curious if someone could list me some examples as what can be done by using them?
Thanks : D

[rocknbil]

See Post #8 [webmasterworld.com], you're not seeing applets because, apparently, those who work closely with Java aren't using them. ssgumby cites an excellent example. I only know just enough Java to get myself into trouble. :-P

[maximillianos]

Java and .Net are used heavily by many enterprise software packages found in mid to large companies. Take SAP for instance. Their backend code is very similar to Java, so they often look for folks proficient in java.

I am a certified java programmer and I rarely use the technology on my own sites. I prefer the ease and simplicity of LAMP solutions.

To generalize, java and dot net are more corporate buzzword technologies. The rest of us us LAMP technologies. ;-)

[piatkow]

Large companies have been unwilling to cross train for many years. I can't even blame it on off-shoreing as they were surviving by poaching each others experienced staff for quite a while before that became an option.

[QiSoftware]

I use a lot of java applets and servlets or some combination on my sites. A major concern is the opensource factor of even server side scripts. Java servlets are also fast.

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