I have 13 years in the mainframe IT industry. Good times. Now however, I want to transition over to something else, preferrably PHP web development. It is not an easy transition; my resume is full of mainframe stuff, with the only evidence I know any PHP is a website portfolio.
I recently got an interview. The guy's title is "Director of Interactive Technology". The jargon he used had me stammering for the right thing to say-- I realized I was not prepared for that interview.
I don't intend to misrepresent my abilities, but I am confident I can quickly pick up on jargon and I can relate it to my own experience. So, can I ask for some input here?
1- Enterprise. My interviewer kept referring to his shop using PHP as an Enterprise solution. A few years ago my employer changed the name of their monster IBM mainframe to "Enterprise Server", so I have a different perspective here. Does it just mean "large scope"? "Big mamma projects"?
2- Interactive Technology. Is this what we old timers call "front end"?
3- Framework. My interviewer talked about a custom framework they were working on, but they were also using another framework and they hadn't decided what to do you. Is a framework essentially an IDE? What are examples of frameworks? Is Zend a framework? Or would the Zend Studio be a framework?
4- Any other advice for me? If someone knows of good reading material comparing the procedural paradigm to the oo paradigm, that would be great. I understand oo in the abstract, but when it comes to sitting down and coding something I'm like water-- I follow the easiest path, and procedural programming is easy. I'm also going downhill fast
