To Java or .Net -- That is the question!

[Mark Thornton]

Sure, if you're willing to tell your users to ignore the scary message.

Or you don't do anything that requires a scary message. The only midlet
I've written so far runs without any scary message being shown.

Mark Thornton

 

[frankgerlach]

I did a medium-complexity server application (actually a simple
multithreaded Object Request Broker) in Java, C#, Smalltalk and C++.
Each implementation has in the order of 1000 lines of code. My general
experience was that the first three languages are quite comparable in
terms of development, debugging and testing effort. The C++
implementation was *very* nasty and difficult to debug, even with gdb
and Purify (it took me at least 3 times longer to debug).
I tend to favor C# over Java when it comes to the
debug/modify/recompile/debug cycle, because csc is way much faster than
javac. Java obviously leads when you talk about multiplatform support.
Runtime performance of C#, Java and C++ was quite comparable, with the
Smalltalk version being about half as fast as the other
implementations.
Smalltalk of course leads in the debug/modify/recompile cycle, because
methods are compiled individually. But who does Smalltalk these times
:-(

 

[David Segall]

These things are very attractive, but for a noobie such as myself, it
is daunting to say the least. It seems to me that as Java has matured,
it has also mushroomed considerably.

The other side of the same coin is that Java _is_ mature. There are
Java libraries for almost anything you wish to do although I agree
that finding them can be difficult. When I started I used Google a lot
and by searching for Java and <task I want to do> I was almost
invariably rewarded with a method and some sample code. There is also
a temptation to compare Java without an IDE to VB.Net which invariably
comes with one. I have written up some IDE's here
<http://ide.profectus.com.au> but I suggest you download the beta of
NetBeans 5. In addition to providing the code completion you are used
to it will insert the import statements once you have found the
appropriate method.

The other thing that worries me
is the speed of the platform itself.

It is true that Java programs are slow to start, but once they are
running they are probably faster than VB programs and comparable to
programs written in other languages. The start-up time is a
consequence of the virtual machine and I don't know how (or if)
Microsoft have solved that problem with .Net.