Time To Brush Up My Java?

Time To Brush Up My Java?

I can't quite decide whether to brush up on my Java (where I at least have 2 1/2 years of not completely current paid experience) or continue learning C#/.NET. Without paid experience, there seem to be no C# jobs.

I apparently failed an interview last week because I didn't know the meaning of the volatile keyword. The interviewer asked me a number of technical questions about C where I knew the answers, and the interviewer acknowledged that I knew the answers. (For example, why would you use a linked link rather than array, and what impact might heap fragmentation have why you would pick one over the other.) I explained that volatile appeared in the C definition about the time that I ceased to do embedded C. (The volatile keyword tells the compiler that the variable may be altered by activities outside of the code being compiled, and therefore don't optimize the code based on the compiler knowing what the value is, or was, or will be.) But that, or perhaps my inability to relocate my family to Seattle, seems to have doomed me for that slot.