I don't think I agree completely with that philosophy. I've heard a lot of programmers say that if you program it shouldn't be about the money. It's as if we should all be devout monks of technology eschewing worldly pleasures in the pursuit of high and noble technological purity. Meanwhile, the business/sales people use all our skills and efforts to make themselves rich. I can't agree with that. I do like programming and I do program for fun in my spare time. However, money is still important. It's an important consideration in choosing what you want to do with your future. It isn't the ONLY consideration, but it's still important.
Actually, I have already done something very similar to that and I did it on the job. At one gig, we used Ext JS to create a front-end web app. This web app would make calls back to server methods written in C#. All the data was passed between the frontend and the server in JSON. It is much more modular and makes the frontend more portable as you say, but I was really more interested in getting away from doing the server side programming in the Microsoft stack. Something completely different.
That's very good. How exactly did you make the switch? Did you start to participate in an open source project? Did you just start learning it on your own and then gt hired somewhere? I'm very interested in hearing aboout how you made the switch.
I realize this is the case for Java and .NET which is probably the main reason I'm thinking about switching. I've done quite a bit of work with OO Javascript professionally, but I've only done side projects in Python and Ruby. I've done some reading on Node.js and NoSQL, but that's about it.
I want to be part of the new wave in IT as well. I don't have a wife and kids so I definitely have more free time.
I'm interested in any more ideas you have on getting started down this path.
I agree with your advice to younger aspiring programmers and I do think of myself that way. I have no trouble putting in the time to learn another stack. I'm really asking more about how to show a potential employer that it would be worthwhile to take my on as a programmer in a new stack at a pay not too far off from what I'm getting now.
I'm reasonably happy, but I'm currently working for a big corporation and there's nothing very exciting about what I'm doing for work. I have been doing projects in Java, Python and Ruby on the side, but my question is more about making the switch professionally. Most companies want to know how many years you've been working with a particular language or technology. If I switched I'd be going from 10 years experience in .NET to 0 experience in another. I'm guessing that switch in experience would result in less pay on a new stack.
I don't have any trouble learning new languages. It's more about how I'm able to present myself to new employers.