Reasons 6-10

The next set is here:

Thanks to Sudhakar and Roshan for most of the stuff in this post.

6. Run Multiple Versions of the VM (Runtime) on the Same Machine Its common to have multiple version of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) available and running simultaneously on the same operating system. This is useful if you need to test your application on different version of the JVM. Try doing this with .NET. Its common for Windows based products to have several machines with different versions of Windows to do tests. In fact, this is in fact such a big problem that even Microsoft licensed the use of VMWare (a product that allows you to run multiple virtual machines) for its 6,000 salespeople

I’m wondering how novice is this guy on .NET, you can use n-number of .NET CLRs on the same machine. Each application can be configured to use the CLR it wants to work with. JVM doesn’t allow independent static instances for multiple instances of the same application, but the fool proof security in CLR appdomains enables to do so. Also you can externally configure you app to run on your choice of version of the CLR and you can throw the Rotor and Mono and vb and vm86 and mfc runtimes into the same machine and pull in your unix apps with MKS and still walk around scot free (- aplogies to all those runtimes i missed)

7. Large Innovative Open Source Community The existence of a large body of open source code is value that should not be ignored. This provides developers an enormous repository of code that can be reused. In fact, most .NET open source projects are rewrites of Java projects.

Open Source is always great…but do not remember that, there is a big risk behind it as well. We can take the JBoss scenario…why is Sun not supporting JBoss? .NET has very big open source community on GOTDOTNET workspaces and sourceforge.net too. The rewrites : True, but totally rewritten from the scrap. NUnit, NAnt are implementation of XP recommendation and are not a rewrite of the Java equivalents. Infact, NUnit currently uses Attributes, while JUnit uses inheritace/interfaces to identify test cases.

8. Low cost Commercial Quality IDE's The Eclipse and Netbeans IDEs are free for any kind of software development. JBuilder and JDeveloper are free for educational use. This is in stark contrast with .NET where Visual Studio.NET costs almost $500. Also, if you think sharpdevelop is commercial grade, think again!

No equivalent Java IDE costs less than VS.NET when it comes to features. It’s an open truth that Microsoft does great job in editors. That’s how VB outperformed its predecessors. The best Java IDE Intelli J Idea with out support costs 500$ per unit.(With support it costs 1000 bucks only) Microsoft has developed a neat and intelligent free editor Web Matrix for web applications. Further more for years there was no Java IDE (What were the Free IDE till NetBeans and Ecllipse came out??) available that did any kind of job. So given time SharpDevelop will improve as it has been doing over the last few months.

9. More Available Jobs A search on Monster.com will quickly reveal that there are 10 times more jobs that require Java skill than C# jobs. In fact a third of C# jobs require Java skills.

Jobs based on skills is a very dynamic thing. The need of skills changes rapidly and the requirement if looked in a global perspective is not very pro-java to say the least. The need for .NET skills globally has been increasing in the past few months

10. Better and Standardized Connectivity to Legacy Applications The Java Connector Architecture (JCA) is a standard for connecting to Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). JCA supports access to SAP, IBM CICS, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Siebel, Screens 3270, AS/400, Unisys, ADABAS-C, VSAM, Codasyl, IMS, Tuxedo etc. This level of connectivity options in unavailable for .NET.

Ignorance does not mean the absence of anything. There are several .NET connector projects (in production or under development) Check out some of these SAP Connector IIOP.NET Oracle data connectors for .NET Siebel Connector

Comments

[Gopinath Varadharajan]

In the same way, you guys are doing, if you could comment on the following site, that would be great..

http://www.geocities.com/petilon/csharp/

Varadhg

[Tim Marman]

Another note about the job ratio, aside from the shifting dynamics as far as skill.

Using absolute numbers here makes for a somewhat shaky argument. It's not just "how many jobs there are" but how many people are competing for those same jobs.

Java is a more mature technology, so there are many more people out there who know it compared to C#. How much larger the talent pool for Java is debatable, but I can tell you this right now:

* My C# / .NET skills are always more noticed now than my Java background.

It's actually a better place to compete for a job because the market is less diluted.

That's like saying we have 1,000,000 positions on how to change a lightbulb, compared to only 50,000 jobs for programming. Clearly one should learn to change a lightbulb!

But you need to remember that the pool of people competing for those 1,000,000 jobs is going to be proportionately much more than those competing for the programming jobs.

[Just me]

Since (8) mentions JBuilder personal, why does it forget to mention C# Builder personal http://www.borland.com/products/downloads/download_csharpbuilder.html (free for non-commercial use)

[Jim Sfekas]

At my company, we do almost all of our development in C#, with a little bit in C++ for legacy code and for optimization. We realized that it would be hard to find too many experienced C# programmers (for obvious reasons), so all of our job listings list Java experience as a desired skill. We've had a very easy time converting Java people over to C#.