Evaluation of the programmer's level when changing the language

Question

PHP

For three years I have been programming in php, writing from scratch and finalizing large high-load portals, and not as a freelancer, but as a full-time employee (in my opinion, this is important). I am thinking about changing the field of activity and switching to writing programs in java. Now I, in my opinion, am a middle php programmer, and who will I be when I try to find a job in java, given that I have no experience in the enterprise with this language, middle or junior?

Answer 1

Neither junior nor middle, you will be a person with experience in backend development without knowledge of Java SE, EE and related frameworks. Those. a person in whom you need to invest money and time before he begins to make a profit (perform tasks). So it all depends on the employer and the quality of your experience.
Go to a couple of junior developer interviews, and then you will understand exactly how the employer is positioning you.

Answer 2

In the comments, many expressed the idea that the level would be zero. But I would develop the idea. The level may be even lower. Just because of previous experience. After all, it is often easier to teach a complete novice in programming than to retrain a specialist, but from another area. And the point is even in the impossibility of mastering, no. A person can master everything. It's a matter of style. In the approach to writing code. The chance to write in Java as in PHP is far from zero.

Answer 3

Whether you are a full-time employee or a freelancer, it makes no difference. I saw "staff" who for 2 years did not develop at all and did not move further, because they were sitting on one or two projects, or simply did not want to.
Yes, and it would be nice to know what you know about java, jsf there, for example, or something else.
And so all these divisions into j / m / s are rather arbitrary and subjective. This only affects self-esteem, perhaps, because in the end, whether you are suitable or not is not what decides. On good, knowledge of one language does not affect the level in any way. You need to know the basic concepts, typical problems and their solutions, data structures, algorithms, patterns ... In a word, things that, although they depend on the language, are weakly and easily transferred to any other language (within reason, of course, you may want to switch to javascript / erlang or whatever, and there the concepts will already differ).