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The son of one of my cow-orkers is having a devil of a time getting a job in the game industry because the school he went to taught the programming curriculum in Java.

He's screwed, near as I can tell, unless he can find at least half a year to sit down and learn C / C++.

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Not to sound like an ass, but getting a good programming job in the game industry is hard enough as it is. After all, the supply-demand ratio for these jobs is much lower than it is elsewhere in the IT industry. I would advise him to get another programming job first, learn some C/C++ in his free time, and then start looking for jobs in the game industry.

As a counterpoint, there are a lot of game programming positions open everywhere, and studios are having a real hard time filling them. Yes, there is more competition than non-games roles, but programmers are still programmers - valuable and rare.

If he's a good programmer he shouldn't give up. If he's job hunting, tell him to spend a good two weeks learning C++ and build a couple of dummy programs, then start applying for roles and continue to work on his C++ in the background. It'll come.

or write games for Android

Any mobile platform will do. J2ME is still bundled in most dumbphones and it isn't too hard to move from Java to C# and address WP7. I gather Microsoft will do anything to get people started.

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