Is it risky specialising in an unpopular framework early on?

[northernladyuk]

Wow, this is a real mixture of advice; so generic as to be utterly useless, combined with so lacking in context as to be...

'...combined with such a lack of context...'

You might need to be able to write modern English in well constructed sentences with some semblance of formatting too, although I've met plenty of developers who can't.

[swamp]

Either go generalist Java dev or niche expensive commercial product.

What ever you do, stick with 'good' technologies. Grails definitely isn't one of them.

[Hobosapien]

There's a reason it's niche and for that reason be wary of dead-ending yourself before you've even found the right road you want to travel.

Personally if I had to choose a tech to get behind it would be one that's likely to be big in the near future that has little resource available at the moment.

I remember a few years ago when Microsoft Team Foundation Server came out, the client I was with at the time wanted to use it to replace Source Safe to take advantage (eventually) of the other things it offered. They had to get some guy over from Israel (IIRC) to do the install, config and training and it cost them quite a lot but they were looking at the long game. I did consider finding a crash course in TFS at the time but then the window passed and I believe it's quite a popular and therefore well resourced and in demand product now.

No idea how that translates to contract availability though. I guess there are ways of searching such things.

So find something up and coming that's likely to have legs (an industry big player behind it) and get in on the ground floor.

[Richard Peck]

Some people still code with Lisp (quite why I have no idea) and C++ hasn't done too badly, either.

But in the end, people pay for the solution not the code. I am heavily into Rails development which has had the infamous "death" sentence from a number of people over the years... but is still booming & the community is as vibrant as ever. Each framework has its pros & cons - the trick is being able to integrate into a stack which is going to be supported in the future. Grails doesn't fit that picture in most cases (unless you have some weird proprietary thing going on).

Why are you so hung up with Grails? If you're a Java guy why not get into ReactJS/Angular? Sounds to me like you're trying to put a square peg in a round hole...

Hey guys,

I'm look for a bit of advice as a potential first timer. How risky is it to go contracting 4 years into my career, and continue specialising in a framework which is not very popular and has been declining in popularity significantly over the past couple of years? (Grails)

Is it better to do this (i.e a lot less opportunities, but more likely to get them when they appear), or should I go more "mainstream" for a couple of years at a permie role (java, spring boot, microservices) and then start contracting in those? (will have hundreds of more potential opportunities, but a lot more competition for them)

When I search job boards I only see between 1 - 3 jobs related to Grails for contracting, but for Java/Spring I see 30+.

My main worry is that in 2 years+ opportunities for Grails will be even more limited then they are now, and it will start to become a struggle to find contracting roles. Also looking way further down the line, in 5 - 10 years I will have pigeon-holed myself in a framework which is no longer used.

Any thoughts would be appreciated!