Proving I can learn Java, C#, or any language for that matter.

[EagleKeeper]

Companies that won't hire you are not worth working for. If you know OO, you know OO. The languages are not important.

Implementation of the concept is important.

Companies now days do not have the spare capacity to train you in the fundamentals of the language that they are using
They may provide reference materials and expect you to improve yourself and reimburse you for expenses to improve.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Companies that won't hire you are not worth working for. If you know OO, you know OO. The languages are not important.

I'll also disagree with this. Companies expect to pay you while getting up to speed on their source code and their development process. They don't expect to pay new hires to learn the common IDE or standard libraries for the language of they're using.

We let existing, proven employees do a certain amount of learning on company time. For example we had one of our employees with Java experience learn enough about Android development to port an iOS app. But that was an employee who had worked here for years not a new hire.

If we'd been hiring a new person as an Android developer, it would never have been a C++ Windows developer with no Java or Android experience. Why would we choose that person over a real Android developer?

 

[Train]

As someone who has hired a lot of coders, I would avoid making generalizations based on the exp listed on a resume.

While the transition from C++ to Java or C# is easy, there are still a lot of gotchas with regards to the standard libraries and language nuances. If you need someone to hit the ground running for **general** development in a specific language, you will need someone who has been around the block a few times in the token frameworks of that language.

However if you have an existing application that is well designed, it's dependencies on the underlying frameworks should be decoupled to the point where a new coder should really only concern himself with the code base, and not the underlying libs. This is the scenario where someone with good grasp of OOP (as most experienced C++ coders do) should wrap their head around very quickly.

I have seen guys with 10 years of C++ exp, but only slight exposure to C#/.Net, run circles around guys who have done nothing but C#/.Net for several years, in C# code bases.

One thing managed languages can do is let sub par coders get by for longer, they are much more forgiving of poor OO design. I'm not saying all Java/C# coders are bad, but if you have "6 years Java programming" listed on your resume, you are still very suspect. For all I know the only apps you have done in that time were intranet based, did not have complicated deployment procedures that covered various versions of OS's and hardware, and were not exposed to users outside your office. You could have gotten away functioning as a glorified procedural coder and your higher ups never knew the difference. All they knew was that you made things happen, and you used Java.

I definetly give points to anyone who has survived in a professional position as a C++ coder (assuming they can back it up of course) The only real disadvantage you may have is that there is no shortage of people who can demonstrate a solid OOP understanding, have real experience under their belts, AND have done some time with the target lang/framework.

All of that being said, one thing I hate is when people say "I can google it" in an interview. Yes, I know you can google for things you don't know.