Last week, a Microsoft representative confirmed that Microsoft bCentral, which provides Web site hosting and services to small companies, lacks support for .NET. The main reason for the lack of support for .Net is that few of bCentral's 15,000 customers have asked for it.

I had an interesting chat with a colleague of mine who *lives* on the MS platform (IIS, ASP, VB Script, COM). He had this to say: "The only ones really talking about .NET is the java community. In my world, nobody finds it that all that interesting. It just doesn't offer a very compelling story."

interesting.

Read Microsoft Web hosting leaves out .Net.

This just out today from news.com:
McNealy: .Net is a joke .

McNealy is whistling past the graveyard.

1) .NET has only been out for 14 months
2) The demand for new software is way down

I have personally not heard much .NET discussions, aside from the normal techno news/development news sorts of sites. However, I'm not sure that matters.

The reason I say that is.. its going to become an inherent part of the MS platform. A developer won't be asking to install or configure it, as it will just be there. Similar to the browser fun, when IE had a small market share. Once it was bundled.. and that bundling had time to roll out through product/system upgrades.. it became the dominant browser in the market. (Not the best mind you, in my biased opinion, since I'm posting from Mozilla.)

Now, I'm not saying that its going to surpass J2EE as an *enterprise* development environment, but that even if developers aren't asking for it now, they will simply have it as a tool in their toolbox in the next few years.

The only people I hear talking about .NET are upper management, marketing and other non-technical people.

In the case of J2EE vs. .NET:

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

>
> In the case of J2EE vs. .NET:
>
> "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Guess who makes the descions on the technology that companies spend money on?

Yep, the "only people you hear talking about .NET".

> and other non-technical people.

That is exactly true. Couple of months ago, we had a great J2EE event on our local Belgian market, hosted by BeJUG. Really great event, but: VERY technically focussed. Result: 600 participants. Then in January Microsoft organised their "Dot Net Convention", a hyper-event, with Gates present and keynoting and everything. A very technical, AND non-technical approach was taken. Result: 6000 participants. No kidding.

To me, this confirms that yes, mostly non-technical people are talking about .Net, and the techies that really understand it are a tiny minority. But in my interpretations this points to one critical danger to the java community (at least here in Belgium): it has become far tooooo technical. In order to be successful, the Java community will have to aim for audiences that are far less technically interested - if only because these people control most of the (scarce) budgets ...

http://dotnetweblogs.com

http://www.codeproject.com

Make no mistake, there is a sprawling developer community around .NET Framework.

>
> http://www.codeproject.com
>
> Make no mistake, there is a sprawling developer community around .NET Framework.

Let's see. If they succeed to go beyond the tips & snipplets stage I'll turn out to be wrong :)
And nothing bad about it - we will have some projects to copy too :))

Just look into the MS newsgroups, high traffic, not so many theoretical problems, just practical doing. As one here already said, MS developers just use it (because sooner or later they must), other discuss and discuss. In about 2 years Java and .NET will have the same market share.

I agree. Java is a good language for platform-independent server-side work. But .NET is real. On the server side, it's a major improvement over the ASP model. On the desktop (if you prefer, on the client side), it brings Delphi-like ease of development to the MS-only shops.

I keep up with Java because I retain a level of fondness for the language and the time I spent as a Java developer. What looked like furious innovation and internal competition two years ago (in IDEs, in GUI libraries, in XML parsers, in Web Servers, etc etc) now looks to me more like a floundering attempt to cover all bases.

I agree, .NET is not as mature as J2EE. But I think the tools are easier to use and more robust. It's exactly like the difference between Oracle and SQL Server. Oracle scales better, runs on more platforms, can be tuned better, and has a more capable development language (in fact, two of them: PL/SQL and its embedded Java). OTOH, when you DON'T need that last ounce of performance, the tools supplied with SQL/Server make it much easier to work with.

Art

"The only ones really talking about .NET is the java community. In my world, nobody finds it that all that interesting. It just doesn't offer a very compelling story."

That's because drones from redmond frequent java community boards. It's their old reptilian side of the brain operating(i.e. burn their books, rewrite history, and convert them)

I think the reasoning here is that the traditional Microsoft developers aren't excited about jumping up to .Net. If the advantages of the Java model didn't sway them, then the advantages of the .Net model, which are similar, aren't likely to sway them either. The Java community has already demonstrated an interest in these things, so the .Net discussion is a natural fit.

OTOH, it becomes quite apparent that .Net will be adopted by MS shops no matter what their inclination is towards the platform. MS will discontinue support for the "old" ways, forcing MS shops to .Net whether they care about it or not.

MS will discontinue support for the "old" ways, forcing MS shops to .Net

Why do you think that? Is PHP extinct because of Java? Python?

Is it because many J2EE developers still use "Big J2EE App Servers" for every kind of project, not only such as could have been better implemented with Tomcat/Resin + Jakarta tools but even on simple projects that might be better of in some scripting language? Do you want MS developers to copy this "strange"(I am polite today) behaviour?

Some enterprise applications is not used that often, maybe 7-8 times during the day could be a case for example. Do you think the customer would accept the large upstart time of the server every time?

And for the amazing “not discussing thing ” you will find that most MS developers do – not talk! The jobsites gives enough proof of .NET viability.

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

What he means is that MS will slowly remove support for regular ASP, VBScript, etc. as they push people towards the .NET platform. They will however, keep support for Visual C++ and other unmanaged code platforms that are needed to get direct access to the OS that just isn't available in their managed code or that needs to be very performance minded (i.e. drivers). Over time, as the .Net platform matures and more of their APIs are made available through the libraries you'll probably see support be discontinued for more and more unmanaged tools. That's just my opinion but it seems like a natural progression of things.

But there is a good upside to understanding the .Net platform now as it does seem like MS shops really aren't moving to it as quickly as MS had hoped and that is you can speak against the platform when the debate in your shop is between which platform to go with because you'll be more educated on the two platforms and hence, able to make better arguments.

Just a few thoughts.

-Mike

Mike,

If you go all the way down from enterprise - mission critical sites - down and down, down to the poweruser doing solutions at the departmental level, in this span there is a huge need for something simple - like ASP or PHP. I am confident that MS will continue to support ASP with its scripting languages JScript and VBscript.

Anything else would be very stupid of Microsoft.

The thing that is wrong with scripting is that when the project grows, ASP eventually becomes unmaintainable. However, this is not a problem with small projects.


Regards
Rolf Tollerud

>
> Anything else would be very stupid of Microsoft.

The company I work for started some new projects using ASP (they´re slow at adopting new technologies), hired new developers, and when tried to buy VisualStudio 6.0 for them, guess what? They don´t sell it anymore, only the .Net version. I call that pulling the plug...

The good thing is that now they're considering changing to JSP, and use open source tools for development instead of paying lots of $$ for all their VisualStudio upgrades. :)

Another thought: most java programmers came from other languages (C++, VB, C, Delphi, Pascal, etc.). But you rarely find someone who started with Java and then went to those languages (besides C#, which is very new). Conclusion: the chance of finding someone who works with Java but can give a shot eventually at other languages is relatively big, while the opposite is somewhat harder to find. So don´t be surprised if you see Java workers dealing easily with "competition", if there's something like that in computer programming anyway. At least for us, programmers and analysts.

Normally I just make it a practice to never answer any more people that make personal attacks. It is most practical. Nevertheless, I make a break of my principles this time to educate you a little.

They don´t sell it anymore, only the .Net version. I call that pulling the plug

You are confusing the developer environment with the languages. Old ASP is supported in Visual Studio .NET and the two can co-exist together - debugging your way from asp pages to aspx. There is no need for VisualStudio 6.0 anymore.

paying lots of $$ for all their VisualStudio upgrades

In a previous discussion on this board, a person tried to convince me that 50K * 10 for a J2EE Server was no great matter because "people are the most expensive" and the 500K was just coffee money..

And now you are saying that the development environment (which has no runtime fees) is too costly. Sure you guys need to learn about proportions..

Anyway I do not understand this passion for IDEs. There is an excellent debugger in the .NET Framework SDK that is free.

That is all you need. The cost to get started with .NET is 0(zero)

I have never questioned that it is good to have Java developers for C# projects. "All that not kills you makes you stronger" (Nietze).

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

>
> And now you are saying that the development environment (which has no runtime
> fees) is too costly. Sure you guys need to learn about proportions..

Yes, mainly because our 3 months long + 10 simultaneous users max projects must be tiny, compared to that guy's.

Guess what OS will the hired people's new computers run? ta-da! That's the "runtime fee" we have to pay for the .Net framework: windows.

>
> Anyway I do not understand this passion for IDEs. There is an excellent
> debugger in the .NET Framework SDK that is free.

Well, I had my share of vi in the past, that´s why I love IDEs.

>
> That is all you need. The cost to get started with .NET is 0(zero)

Sure. And since we don´t really need IDEs, let´s all run notepad and start coding C# right now! Dont't worry about version control, deployment, unit tests: the debugger is free!

>
> I have never questioned that it is good to have Java developers for C#
> projects. "All that not kills you makes you stronger" (Nietze).

OK, I know that that phrase is a flame bait, but I must ask you: have any Java developer put fire in any expensive property you owned in the recent past? Let go this anger, it's not good for your health...

This week I went to a IT forum event our IT department arranged with many vendors and suppliers. There were lots of showcases and presentations, and most of them were about J2EE. Only 2 about MS software: the first, about .Net, M$ sent a totaly unprepared guy which is currently working at our site (totally tech guy), the presentation was so boring people almost slept. The second one, about project management, was even better: the guy simply didn´t show up, so they cancelled it. MS is not what it used to be any more...

Let go this anger, it's not good for your health

When shall you learn not to degrade to personal attacks? Do you not realize that only your own reputation suffer - and your cause too.

Bye the way - it was similar invective like yours from the Java camp that in the beginning alienated me from Java.

"People with that attitude and such language can never be right" (and how right I was!)

Isaac Asimov:
"If you say something loud enough and often enough, and with enough
conviction, any idea, no matter how ludicrous, will be believed by some
people."

But only for a time - and that time have passed now.

Bye (this time for sure),
Rolf Tollerud

> that only your own reputation suffer - and your cause too.

And what in the world makes you cause better than mine? You're the one atacking Java developers incessantly. Worse: just for the fun of it. Very good sense of humor indeed.

>
> Bye the way - it was similar invective like yours from the Java camp that
> in the beginning alienated me from Java.

By the way, why not look into your own actions here on this forum, maybe you will find out that you are in exaclty that same position regarding .net here on this forum. So you holy war against Java may be frowning people from .net, instead of taking them away from java. Think about it.

>
> "People with that attitude and such language can never be right" (and how
> right I was!)

Everything is relative. Your language is as religious as any Java zealot can be. You dont own the truth. No one does.

Dont complain if someone kick your back when you throw flame baits around like you alwais do here. "Say what you want, hear what you don't", as we use to say in my country.

No one needs you here, you are adding nothing to the comunity. Don't slam the door when you go, please, there are others coming in. Bye.

I agree with Rolf's statement <cite>I have never questioned that it is good to have Java developers for C# projects</cite>. A Java developer (excuse me...a good software engineer/practitioner with java experience) on a .net project adds a very fresh perspective and generally a short learning curve. I can say based off of practical knowledge from 2 projects.

I also would like to add that you can use a free IDE that copies VS.Net and is quite good (better in some areas like template and quickcode combinations) for most .Net development using SharpDevelop (http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/). So, total cost of the SDK and a very reasonable IDE is still $0 USD (for those penny pinchers).

Lance

How squinted shortsightedness !

MS Developers != VB developers

MS Developers = VB developers + C/C++ devs + T-SQL devs + C# + VB.NET + VJ#

If u think "design patterns" apply to Java only - I have nothing more to say.

How arrogant and what hot air ! Needs to be punctured soon !

I recently met a Java developer who has never programmed in anything but Java.
This guy could not comprehend the concept of a processor register stack!

I am not surprised - most java developers knowledge of SQL is so pathetic.

This is the new generation of java programmers - full of inferiority complex and non-Java hatred.

Wake up doods - a lot of other programming speciality exists !

Chameleon

chameleon,

Remember we are discussing Java vs .NET - not programmer skill. And there are the Java Architects who are the real incompetents (well-meaning impractical theoreticians),IMO, not the poor developers.

The developers on the others hand, that have to try to make the mess work, cannot help but to acquire amazing skills. "All that not kills you makes you stronger".

By the way what are your opinion of - what is the shortest book in the world? – "Jewish sport achievements thorough the times" or "J2EE success stories"?

(Apologies to my Jewish friends but they have a sense of humor – in opposition to Java zealots)

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

Chamomile: I recently met a Java developer who has never programmed in anything but Java. This guy could not comprehend the concept of a processor register stack!

Hmm. I've programmed in 650x and 68000 and x86 assembly (not to mention machine code, C, C++, VB, PB, C#, ...), and I don't remember anything about a "processor register stack". We had registers of course, and we had stacks (e.g. ss:bp) but for the life of me, I can't remember any "processor register stack". In fact, the only thing I can find on it via Google is a trademarked Register Stack Engine (RSE) that is an Intel marketing term for their Itanium processor.

Sounds to me like you are making sh*t up again, just like ninja boy.

On the other hand, maybe Google is broken.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Easily share live data across a cluster!

First, I agree in total that (MS Developers != VB developers).

Second, Did you even read my message above (Message #77589). I bashed the bad Java developers as well. Excuse me (while I attempt to follow the straighter and narrower path)...I bashed the poor programming practitioners that use the java technology stack. This bashing goes as well for the poor programming practitioners that use the MS technology stack.

Tertiary, <cite>If u think "design patterns" apply to Java only - I have nothing more to say.</cite> Please! How can you infer this from any of my previous statements. I attempt to troll and comment as neutrally as possible in these threads as I consider myself technology agnostic. So, do I think that "design patterns" apply to Java only? No, I personally have probably read more material and coded as much with patterns in C++, Smalltalk and Eiffel as I have in Java. Have you ever attempted to build a shared-server or persistent policy multi-threaded CORBA server w/out some knowledge of patterns (concurrency, caching, etc)? Please stay away from the generalizations b/c I think that most reasonable people on this thread agree that design patterns are language (and mostly platform) neutral and can be used by any decent s/w engineer. The simple fact (excuse me...my opionion) is that patterns dominate (to a fault sometimes) the Java community more than the MS community. Now, I may have stepped across an invisible boundry and made a generalization. However, it is pretty clear that this is a reasonable stereotype of the communities.

<cite>I am not surprised - most java developers knowledge of SQL is so pathetic.</cite> Another blatant generalization. What's the use of this statement?

Finally, what in the HECK is a "processor register stack"? I don't remember this from any of the assembly coding.

chameleon,

Do you remember what I said about dishonest and hypocritical "debating? (post #77553). These guys are masters of it.

Just because you prepended "processor" to register stack the are making
it so that an uninformed bystander think that you do not know what you are talking about. Then at the same time, they are diverting the attention from the important things like performance, maintainability, productivity, failure rate, over engineering, and so on - to some bagatelle.

I am more and more convinced that the J2EE followers really must be some leftovers from the old Soviet Union. To all of them I can only say:

The time is up! If the J2EE camp cannot deliver (fast end efficiently) enterprise, mission critical solutions, others will. No amount of reasoning, imaginative talk and squirming excuses will help – a consequence of the capitalistic society.

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

P.S I now wait for the inevitable personal attacks..

Register windowing, Register Spilling, Rotating Registers...

Please read your CPU specs

$un UltraSpark CPU, Itanium .. both have it.

Chameleon

Yeah, the .Net platform is very close to Java. You can surely say that it exists 100% because of Java and it has inherited many of Java's great features. So it is natural that we discuss .Net.

What I don't like is the negative attitude of many Java guys towards .Net. We should feel flattered actually. And .Net will drive Java forward as Java has driven .Net. I really hope that the good features of .Net will enter Java in the not so distant future. The concepts of events, overriding and parameter passing are realized better in C# than in Java and I want to see that in Java ASAP.

Java is mature, Java is rich, Java is multiplatform, Java has the strength of open source behind it.
.Net will mature and will probably be rich, but it will never be multiplatform and I doubt we will see much open source projects for it.
So I stick with Java :) but I wish .Net well - it will only benefit us in the end

You are correct...they (the dotnet and java technology stacks) will continue to converge due to natural evolution and competition.

However, I hope you are not correct about the OSS not using C# & .net platform on a broader basis than obvious ports (ximian, dotgnu, log4net, nunit, nant, etc). The MS camp needs to consolidate the diverse dotnet communities into creating cohesive OSS projects to further the platform.

"The MS camp needs to consolidate the diverse dotnet communities into creating cohesive OSS projects to further the platform."

M$ is alreading moving towards that: GotDotNet Workspaces, an OSS projects repository, just like SourceForge.

Maybe M$ came to the conclusion: if you can´t win them, join them!

Regards,
Henrique Steckelberg

I am familiar with the workspaces (a perfect example of the problem). DotNet guys think they need to re-create sourceforge!!! I am more interested in the divergent communities bridging the gap (that is wider IMHO than the j2ee/dotnet technology gap) by using (or enhancing) well-known mechanisms (like sourceforge) that are already familiar to the OSS and Java communities.

Also IMHO, there is no doubt that the good MS & java developers can make strong contributions to each platforms' projects in the OSS space. A good example of this collaboration is what Kent Beck, et al did by porting nunit from java/junit and enhancing with nunit 2.0.

It would be really surprising if M$ started supporting SF. I don't think it will ever happen. It's not M$ way of doing business. And BTW, the relation between M$ and OSS is not that good..

Healthy competition is always a good thing, anyway.

Regards,
Henrique Steckelberg

I will be really surprised if .Net attracts many OSS projects. It is against the nature and spirit of Microsoft and Windows.
Do you know of any major open source project that was created initially for Windows? I don't.
The vast majority are ports form Linux. Most probably the vast majority of OSS projects for .Net will be ports from Java.

Microsoft doing Linux type of open source - that will be fun to see :!))

Well, that Workspaces initiative isn't about M$ itself doing development, but community work only. But either way, having M$ fostering such kind of initiative, and coming up with that Shared Source thing, after all the bashing of OSS and GPL and all, we can see that something is really hapening here.

But it was the same thing with java: after concluding they couldn't win, they copied it. That's M$ way of doing business, nothing new here...

Regards,
Henrique Steckelberg

I don't think that opening an open source community site will do the job. It will take more than that to attract the OSS community.
It takes a company that is not Monopolo-soft :) The wolf changes its fur but not its character :)

The OSS guys at Jakarta (a more apt name would be "The Professionals") and the Apache group have nothing common with Stallman and his "gangsters" (sorry, it just slipped out - not my fault!)

OSS and OSS can be a very different thing. MS has always aimed their fire at the GPL type of license, which you choose to ignore of course.

Jakarta was forced to do some serous arm-twisting do make the latest deal with Sun - in fact, according to Jason Hunter, they had to threatened to stop all development in Java..

Count on MS to court Jakarta and other reasonable folks at OSS in every possible way in the future..

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

If Microsoft invests in OSS we will only benefit. An OS project belongs to the people who do it, know it and use it.
Microsoft will be investing in us - the developers and this cannot be bad :!)

But don't forget Microsoft is not a hardware company, it is not IBM or Sun.
They are software and if they invest in us they will not be investing in themselves. They have been succeeding exactly as a company that services not so professional software engineers (VB, Windows, MS Office).
I don't want to offend the professional Microsoft developers and there is nothing wrong with having good tools - I just don't believe Microsoft wants to invest in us. If we are outside of Microsoft, then Microsoft prefers to see us as midrange programming drones that buy into their money machine.

An OS project belongs to the people who do it, know it and use it

As far as I know, the projects with the Apache type of license belong to nobody (or everybody).

MS business idea is not to make money of "plumbing software". It can only be to MS advantage to have a pool of OSS members developing components that is usable with MS products.

Microsoft prefers to see us as midrange programming drones that buy into their money machine

As I said before OSS can be very different. FSF, Apache, Sourgeforce and companies like MySQL – each have their distinctly different personality.

But if it is any organization that is really unpleasant to me, both for their totally ridiculous marketing and claims as well as midrange programming drones that buy into their money machine, then it is the JBOSS group -

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

> developing components that is usable with MS products.

Yeah, definetly :) If Microsoft can get the OSS for free it will benefit them a lot. But serious OSS does not live on air :) As you say The Professionals want to make professional money!
It will take that MS invests in it and this is what is not going to happen, at least nothing more than dust in the eyes.

JBoss group are making a great product and they are making it with a spirit. What's wrong about it? The AOP concepts they have embraced are forefront tech and I have no patience to get my hands on the 4.x releases. They are doing a very smart thing to introduce that more generalized AppServer paradigm, but yet to stay in standards. This is not stuff for midrange programming drones, though they are doing good job at making it user friendly.
They can definetly be another good .Net inhibitor :))

I am not talking about the technical things (that is another discussion, lets just say - We are not impressed). I mean the whole sham operation - to make people- drones or not - work and contribute without pay - helping the founders and their family to get rich by building a privately owned company. It also includes taking away credit from the gifted people that helped them getting started. "It was not really that important and anyway everything is new code now"..It also includes the claims - "we have 40% of the market" - our EJBs speeds up performance by a factor of 10 – etc etc.

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

I know nothing about it, so I won't comment.

For me the bottom line is that JBoss is OSS and if I am not happy with the management of the project or the technological direction I can branch it, improve it and release it as my own product if I like. If know the product I can use it to my benefit.

This is why it does not matter what OSS licence it is - Microsoft is not going to invest in it, because they don't realy own it anymore. OSS is owned by the people who know its guts.

Huh, how so ($10-100 for documentation, hardly a "money machine")?.

Interesting observation (today)

go to www.monster.com

keyword jobs percentage

java 3677 74%
dotnet 1296 26%

Total 4973

In one year 0 to 26% does not seem like a joke to me.

chameleon.

..and at www.it.jobserve.com:

(search WebLogic vs .NET)

January 29
.NET: 455
WebLogic: 182 (40% of .NET)

February 28
.NET 550
Weblogic 210 (38% of .NET)

March 18
.NET 543
Weblogic 196 (36% of .NET)

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

Baby crawls, then walks from there it takes a long time...

.NET is a baby and we are not in late 90's for Nasday style growth...

Lets focus on reality...

Yuri!

but it will never be multiplatform

I just want to inform you that you have received the great honor that your post has been saved for future reference!

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

Actually Microsoft will do a smart thing if they start porting .Net to Linux right away!

If Linux gains (and it will) more market share, many shops will choose Java because it is multiplatform (and they don't want to loose neither the Windows nor the Linux markets). This may further drive the adoption of Linux, because it is cheaper and there are applications for it. And when investors get the picture Microsoft shares will drop, which will further drive Linux and Java ahead :)

That's about predicting the future :)

Microsoft CO's are smart but I think they are still too self confident :) so I don't think they are gonna make a Linux port before their shares drop :)

Actually Microsoft will do a smart thing if they start porting .Net to Linux right away!

MS is making a smart move of leaving the port to OSS.

1) They can observe in a laidback style if OSS (Ximian) succeeds.
2) If OSS does not deliver MS will do it by themselves (which they have prepared in every way).

The reason that they would prefer OSS to do it could be that if they do it themselves politics will force them to include everything. I think they would prefer that Linux/Unix stays a little behind.

And BTW, the relation between Java and OSS is not that good..

Regards
ROlf Tollerud

If MS does not help, Ximian cannot do it by themselves - its a huge task. Java is not the sole effort of Sun and Sun are a far bigger company than Ximian.

> 2) If OSS does not deliver MS will do it by themselves (which they have prepared in every way).

Preparing it will not do the testing job, they will still end up with a lesser product.

> I think they would prefer that Linux/Unix stays a little behind.
Then you are back at square one - software shops will not choose .Net because they cannot use it on Linux.

It is a paradox and a stupid one too, but for what I know Java for Solaris is not as good as the Windows or Linux versions. Sun is going to fix that, however, if they haven't done so already.
To be multiplatform doesn't mean to cheat 'em that you are multiplatform - we are not that stupid.
I am telling you - multiplatform and OSS is against Microsoft's nature - they have to go to hardware or become a service type (not product type) of company to embrace those two. It will not be Microsoft any more.

Then you are back at square one - software shops will not choose .Net because they cannot use it on Linux

You are very wrong here. It will be enough with 80% of .NET functionality on Linux/Unix to kill of Java.

Personally, I think that 20% will be enough!

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

> functionality on Linux/Unix to kill of Java.

If you are staying in those 80% on Windows too, then may be yes :)
But can you bet on it. I would't buy into it.

> Personally, I think that 20% will be enough!
You are way over your head. It will be safer to say that .Net is yet 20% of what Java is. But I don't like religious arguments...
Besides PHP is already there - it is beyond the 20%, but it is nobody's killer. Actually PHP & MySQL & an Eclipse based IDE can end up being a pretty good .Net inhibitor :)

Rolf: You are very wrong here. It will be enough with 80% of .NET functionality on Linux/Unix to kill of Java.

Especially if you have real ultimate power!

For example: Ninjas can kill anyone they want! Ninjas cut off heads ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These guys are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time. I heard that there was this ninja who was eating at a diner. And when some dude dropped a spoon the ninja killed the whole town.

Personally, I don't think Java stands a chance against your power.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Easily share live data across a cluster!

<qoute>
And BTW, the relation between Java and OSS is not that good.
</quote>
Hmm... 8172 projects just on sourceforge.net:
http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=160

100% agree

Many <stereotype>VB developers</stereotype> are going to find a steeper learning curve than what was expected and are not going to be compelled to make the shift. The are not excited about stretching their gray matter to develop techniques that we have been using in Java, Smalltalk and C++ for years. Ultimately, many developers in the MS camp that are COMFORTABLE with the powerful joystick (Visual Studio - no slight against this great tool) and simplicity of component-oriented departmental development with VB6 will need to be forced into the .Net world.

Go ahead and dive into .Net (the water is warm) and learn (this goes for the Java community as well). My only advice is to be open-minded and attempt to understand everything under the hood before reaching an opinion on a technologies purpose/usefulness.

I'm not a big .NET or MS fan, but McNealy's statements always mention Sun ONE as if it was equivalent with Java or J2EE. I honestly don't know a single company that uses Sun ONE - so IMHO this hurts his credibility (if there ever was any) a lot.

I recently had a discussion with a colleague who has been progamming Java/Swing for a long time (and is really good at it). He claims that programming UIs in C#/.NET is *a lot* more productive and efficient than doing the same thing in Java. So perhaps we're going to end up with J2EE on the server, C#/.NET on the client, and Web services in between ...

Yes, and without reusable components for developers Java will go out
of servers too. And very soon as we saw it for desktops :(

> nobody finds it that all that interesting. It just doesn't offer a very
> compelling story.

If you cannot choose, why are you going to talk about it? You just accept the new 'gift' from Microsoft.

Java world is open, and J2EE has become what it is because of his community of developers.

In the future, .NET will be sustained by the infinite cash from Office and Windows. Java will be sustained by the infinite talent of the community. Let's wait for the next technical revolution: Java developers will adopt some new incredible and exciting technology, and .NET will be replaced with the new solution from the guys from Redmond. And .NET developers will adopt silently the new 'gift' from Microsoft... unless big corporations realize that maybe they can put Linux in their desktops, replace Office with some Opensource solution, save millions of $ in licensing for people that only use Microsoft Excel!

Cheers
Diego

At 26% of the full time jobs, java skilled devs better learn .net fast.
Window may just be 1 more year for the scale to be 50-50.

chameleon

.Net is new and there are two sides to it - it is not yet widely accepted but were it is accepted they have to recruit the whole team.

The best you can expect is for traditional Windows shops to move from Java to .Net; and that will be slow too - check out
http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=7900043

A search on the job sites shows a 50/50 relationship between Unix/Linux and Windows searches.
And then ask yourself what kind of projects are done under Unix/Linux and what under Windows. I personally pefer the Unix/Linux/Java camp :)

Something for the true believers: It all started with OSS and it will end there and everything in the middle serves its purpose :)

1) The 26% figure makes no distinction between .Net tools used as
   follow-ons to plain old Visual Studio and .Net tools used because
   they're .Net.

2) Even if the 26% figure can be taken at face value, basing trends
   on this figure by itself is fallacious:

   Case 1: displacement

    Java: 10000 jobs 100%
    .Net: 0 jobs 0%

   goes to
   
    Java: 7400 jobs 74%
    .Net: 2600 jobs 26%

   Then the inferrence is that the future ratio will be 50-50

   Case 2: 0 growth Java, .Net establishing itself

    Java: 10000 jobs 100%
    .Net: 0 jobs 0%

   goes to

    Java: 10000 jobs 74%
    .Net: 3157 jobs 26%

   Then the inferrence is that the future ratio will be 57-43

Anyway - lets compare the numbers after 1 year again.

Wish both camp the best.

Market decides.

Chameleon

>
> Wish both camp the best.
>
> Market decides.
>
> Chameleon

Now we agree. Rolf and his holy crusade against java isn't going to tip the market anyway, despite his brave efforts here.

But if M$ "wins" in the end, I cant help but feel it will be "marketing" winning "technical", "big money" winning "community effort", as has happened many times before.

Market decides. Of course. However, I cannot but help hoping that the moral side wins, the polite - the good guys as in the old matinee movies.

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

>
> Regards
> Rolf Tollerud

At last we can see you are changing sides! Welcome to the Java world! :)

Hurrah!!

Are Java people the only ones talking about .NET?

Well, maybe because there´s always some M$ zealots trolling java forums just for fun (or maybe for some $$ from M$, who knows?), adding nothing to either community.

It's always M$ disturbing the peace, why can't we live in peace? Oops, maybe this is about to happen... Let's see: an M$ troll accepts the fact that M$ itself would consider porting their software to Linux (yeah, and throw away windows...), M$ banners all around slashdot (what?), M$ investing in a J2EE company (TMC), fostering a OSS repository a la SourceForge, creating a J2EE-like technology (.Net)... mmmm... interesting string of facts... Who knows where this will end? Or is this just despair? Can't win them, so join them? Embrace, extend and extinguish them? Who knows? only Rolf, and his magic crystal globe of ninja power!

M$ doen't need anyone defending them at public forums, given their size, $$$, marketing power, and all the "bestest" tools they have. Or are things changing, lately?

Few things give me so much pleasure as irritating J2EE/EJB zealots.
Probably a fault in my character!

When I see a post like yours (and Camerons) I know I have succeeded..

Bye,
Rolf Tollerud

Rolf,

You think Cameron through out all of his Java source and J2EE tools? All you've done is waste your own time. If you .Net guys actually wrote code you may have a little less time on your hands to post in news groups. Maybe this indicates that there just aren't that many opportunities out there for .Net developers right now? Even Microsoft admits that it has been slow to catch on. That could be that it is a solution waiting for a problem that already has many solutions? Wrap your pee brain around that!

Rob

> Probably a fault in my character!
>

We've noticed that. The fault, I mean.

> Probably a fault in my character!

From your posts here and elsewhere it would appear that this is the only reason you are here - unless of course you are really a kind of Messiah - trying to lead us down the one true path - trying to save us from unnecessary pain and hardships (job losses, extra work, etc) for ignoring the power and love of Microsoft. That must be why you are here right? I mean no one is that much of a loser to continually post and post and post the obviously inflamatory - right? Unless of course what appears to be inflamatory is not really inflamatory at all, but the misunderstood words of a visionary. Galileo was persecuted for his insights too afterall.

I think I'm starting to see you message Rolf - .net is wonderful, .net is going to kill Java, Microsoft is going to take over the world and this will be the best thing that has ever happened. Imagine - a world united under Microsoft and a single platform. Imagine the increase in productivity. No more DB, OS, IDE wars. No more annoying 'vendor-selection' investigations. No more specification ambiguities that result in subtle incompatibilities. Microsoft Valhalla lies in wait if only the stubborn would take the time to listen and see the light.

How could I have been so foolish.

And still, for some reason, I don't want to convert. I'm not sure what is holding me back. Laziness maybe. Fear of loss maybe, fear of the unknown - like in the .net world is there an MVC framework, is there Velocity, is there Beanshell and Lucene and JEdit and all the other tools I've come to love? Is there tiny web servers like Brazil (very cool), can I run as many instances of this IIS thingy as I want? Can I run it at home for free? Can I run it all on my Linux box? Is the DB free for personal use? I'm sure it is all there somewhere and that these pathetic tools I like pale in comparison to the power of the Microsoft ones. I guess it is just the fear of the unknown really.

I know my developer soul is at risk here. I'm like a Cobol developer stuck in the past. I worship the devil Java at my peril and yet, I don't seem to care. I guess I deserve to be damned.

Well thanks for trying anyway.

And to think I just thought you were a troll.

net is wonderful, .net is going to kill Java, Microsoft is going to take over the world and this will be the best thing that has ever happened

No, MS business idea is not to make money on "plumping software" (like Sun is trying to do)

Rather: a Java like language and framework - albeit better - build on a free standard and with an Open Source implementation is going to take over the world - until the "next" thing comes along. (Mainly because Sun would not let go their death-grip of Java)

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

The statement seems to be confirmed by what I saw on the CeBit last friday. Java and J2EE was mentioned in a matter-of-fact kinda way; it no longer was used as eye catcher, but more like "this is how we've done it". DotNet on the other hand I only found on the Microsoft stand.

I must admit that I did not visit every stand on the Cebit ;-)

Tom

Here are some examples of J2EE

www.nordea.com or (nordea.fi for us finns). Before the merging which created nordea, the Finnish bank Merita was the biggest online bank in the world. (No kidding we have payed our bills 'with the internet' for the last 6..7? years already, and even before that almost all companies used direct modem connection to the bank to pay the bills)

So back in the year 2000 (when americans where busy signing cheques) Merita had something like 200 000 online customers using the web bank on a daily or at least weekly basis. That software was J2EE based, and still is.

I love Java, but I don't like to underestimate other technology. If .Net is really a joke, then we really should not worry about it. But it does not seem like that now. And "if" (a big IF) later .Net is able to out perform J2EE, McNeally can only bite his fingernails. I just don't like his arrogant way to say .Net is a joke.

Ps.
Rolf, you are really annoying.

The most important of J2EE x .Net is people, and most of best minds are with Java.

.Net people will come from VB and C++. I suppose that they will make shit before a complete learn. It will take long and probably more than 1 year.

Meanwhile java minds are getting more and more richer, after this Java dominate the world! lol

I really like competition, and hope it turns in the best to the end user( the customer )

<rant>
OK #1 - Rolf, you're an idiot. People like you MAKE Java developers feel queasy when they hear about .NET... You probably don't even use it...
</rant>

This whole thread is asinine. The title should be "Are Java developers the only ones having moronic arguments about .NET?". I have been switching between J2EE and .NET because of production environments for the last 8 months, and the biggest barrier to adoption I can see for .NET is Visual Basic programmers. I have never worked with a more intellectually underdeveloped, technically anemic group of pseudo-programmers in my life. It will take YEARS for the small minority of them that are even capable to get the most BASIC (pun intended) grasp of OO design and most of the ones I've met have never heard the words "Application Architecture" used together and think that design patterns are something you register for when you get married. That does not mean that .NET is not worthwhile, I have in fact grown quite fond of C# and when I'm using Java I find myself wishing for attributes and inheritable abstract fields (properties), when I'm using C#, however I find myself wishing for other Java developers....

I think there will be a huge boom in .NET OSS software mainly fueled by Java developers like me who can see the shortcomings in MS's enterprise architecture (if there is one... COM+?! Give me a break!!) and want familiar, even cross environment skills. A number of common Java tools have already been ported to .NET (Ant, JUnit, Log4J, Cruise Control) and many others are sure to follow (I'm hoping someone will start a port of Hibernate, my excuse is I'm too busy...). Scott McNealy better pull his head out of his butt now because, if he doesn't get the JCP moving forward faster and come up with some good new technologies the .NET story is only going to become more compelling at all levels of business.

But I don't really care - I know both.

But I don't really care - I know both

I am impressed!

Hope this silences the critics:

http://blog.manageability.org?catname=101+List

'nuff said.

Carlos,

These 3 is the only one that counts:

8 times slower performance (for large enterprise type applications)
4 times more difficult to maintain
2 times less productivity

Why 101 when you need only 3 reasons?

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

>8 times slower performance (for large enterprise type applications)
>4 times more difficult to maintain
>2 times less productivity

Prove it please. Or else I will also make some easy statements like:

1. Microsoft products are full of bugs.
2. Microsoft's products take a lot of hard drive space not because of the quality of the softwares but because of the patches that user has to download to cover the security holes.
3. Microsoft's .NET "may" start with zero but later the cost will climb significantly since user has to keep upgrading the software for the bugs that the company fix (not for additional features)

prove it

I don’t have to. People are voting with their feet. Search the jobsites once a month – or better still, once a week on any Java related, and you will see how Java rapidly is loosing ground on all fronts – at a steadily increasing pace.

There are many reasons to why people want a "Java like language and framework build on a free standard and with an Open Source implementation", better performance, maintainability and productivity being only some of them. One reason is Sun's attempts to make money on fake test kits (look the other thread in this forum <Sun and JBoss "in talks" over J2EE 1.4 Licensing>), and generally reluctance to release control.

Another is the curious fact that Java seems to attract people that are interested in "computer science"; think of how different things could have been if Java developers only had followed this simple advice:

"do not allow any well-meaning but impractical theoreticians to exert any control over you; make sure that your associates are competent, experienced and tolerant folk, without ideological axes to grind"

Only one last remark. There are no doubt that the guys that are best suited to do .NET projects is Java programmers, after all, C# and Java is very similar! It is funny then, that just those – on ground of MS prejudice – will refuse – until they are leapfrogged by the C++, VB, C, Delphi, Pascal crowd..

How ironic!

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

Well ralph

  Don't know what part of the world you are in , But in Australia,
  i'd rather be a java contractor than a .net contractor.

  If you look into the .Net jobs advertised you'll find a majority of them
  are just rehashes of the old ASP sites within organisations.

  From what i have seen in most Govt and large banking areas,
  .Net will replace the old cheap nasty ASP sites. The larger enterprise
  systems appear to be all J2EE.

  Given that most Govt and large corporations are seriously looking at Linux,
  I'd say MS is more Harmful to .Net than sun is to Java.

I'll keep that in mind.

Here you go again, flame baiting again. Weren't you leaving? Grab your notepad editor and free debugger, and go. Do us that favour.

> I don’t have to. People are voting with their feet. Search the jobsites once a month – or better still, once a week on any Java related, and you will see how Java rapidly is loosing ground on all fronts – at a steadily increasing pace.
>
> Regards
> Rolf Tollerud

Rolf,

I think .net is the natural move of companies working with VB and VC++. This is the main reason of a lot of .net jobs, but it doesnt mean that java companies are moving to .net.

Its is not stated anywhere, but more and more companies are going open source as they are getting mature. Open Source means Linux, Java, but I can't see Microsoft.

Even microsoft is not addopting .net is because every transition has to be carefull, and most of companies are waiting .net mature.

Java technology and Java people are some steps ahead from Microsoft. Its a fact.

between java & dotnet.

So just stop quarelling.

Chameleon.

Its is not stated anywhere, but more and more companies are going open source

Java vs .NET is one thing and Linux vs Windows is another thing.

The competition between Java and .NET are mainly a fight at the "top" i.e. enterprise mission critical sites and can only finish in one way IMO. Consider the combination of Intel Madison (to be released this summer) and SQL server + .NET - for a fraction of the cost of for example Sun Solaris/Oracle/Webshere (with its 70-80% project failure rate).

"Microsoft is finally beating Oracle and competing with Unix in the scale-up benchmarking game" at,
http://www.entmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=5707 (these results are with Itanium 2 not Madison and for non-clustered database systems)

The competition between Linux (with IBM), and Windows on the other hand is a fight MS cannot win especially as .NET/Mono on Unix/Linux will greatly help Linux. But it will take a looong time, and before that MS will have all its software stack on Unix (both productivity software and enterprise applications).

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

>
> Java vs .NET is one thing and Linux vs Windows is another thing.
>

Yes its another thing, but companies that choose Linux as their SO must choose C or Java for the software architecture.

> The competition between Java and .NET are mainly a fight at the "top" i.e. enterprise mission critical sites and can only finish in one way IMO. Consider the combination of Intel Madison (to be released this summer) and SQL server + .NET - for a fraction of the cost of for example Sun Solaris/Oracle/Webshere (with its 70-80% project failure rate).
>

Project failure doesnt means technologie, means management. If a Java or .net project fail is not a fault of the technologie.

> "Microsoft is finally beating Oracle and competing with Unix in the scale-up benchmarking game" at,
> http://www.entmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=5707 (these results are with Itanium 2 not Madison and for non-clustered database systems)
>

Since MS SQL 7, microsoft has gained market share and increasing more. MS SQL is a very good product.

> The competition between Linux (with IBM), and Windows on the other hand is a fight MS cannot win especially as .NET/Mono on Unix/Linux will greatly help Linux. But it will take a looong time, and before that MS will have all its software stack on Unix (both productivity software and enterprise applications).
>

I personally dont think a .net unix implementation will happen or be a sucess.
Lets wait til mature. Microsoft has power and with the right people they can reach that.

> Regards
> Rolf Tollerud

Regards
Bengtson Erik

Carlos,

I have to admit, this is a pretty impressive list in length. However, at a glance many of your points seem to be little more than generalizations and trendy industry myths given organized form. I haven't looked at the WHOLE list, nor have I done extensive research on each point laid out within (because I have neither the time nor the inclination to do so), but having just looked at the first 15 I happened to see (11 thru 25) at one time I have a few rebuttal comments:

11) Multiple Vendor Choice and Support - true this provides a great deal of choice, but I've seen organizations paralyzed by the analysis (and time and cost) that goes with choosing the best combination. This was actually borne out in that TMC .NET vs. J2EE Benchmark last December; they spent weeks just choosing the right combination of vendor products and making the necessary optimzations. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that a company's choices should be eliminated entirely to make it easy. I'm just saying that the multiple vendor choice issue can be a double-edged sword.

12) Compile to Machine Code - if the implication is that .NET doesn't have anything for this, then it does. Just in the Framework SDK alone there's a native image generator for compiling processor-specific machine code. I've not heard of others but it wouldn't surprise me to find that some third-party vendor also has a tool (probably even a better one if they specialize).

13) Future Proof - are you kidding? Nothing is future proof, ask any historian (and those guys thought those degrees were good for nothing :) As far as existing code bases not becoming obsolete, then what's all this talk I read of people complaining because something they wrote under 1.2.1 is broken in 1.3.1, and so forth? That's not an implication that similar silliness doesn't occur in the .NET world (side-by-side .NET version claims, I'm looking at you :), but more of a "Those who live in glass houses..." type of statement.

14) Most Popular Language in the Corporation - the statistics in the study you cited were pretty funny (especially the paragraph where they point out the "statistical lie" of percentage respondents coming out greater than 100% :) I read this article and didn't really get at all that Java was most popular language. In fact, it got most votes because of the split between C# and VB. If you really read the article, it's another one of those "we're going to go with a mix". Not to seem rude, but this article was a very poor choice to bolster such a generalization.

INTERMISSION: I have already spent more time on this than I had planned to do.

15) Larger Talent Pool - this is opinion, not factual in any way. There are many very bright VB developers, and a lot of those C# guys are senior software engineers from the C++, Java, SmallTalk and even VB backgrounds. This point sounds a lot like what I used to say about the poor development skills of Java programmers, based solely on the fact that the ones we hired were horrible and not on any specific industry knowledge. I've grown since then.

16) More Contributions From R&D Organizations - I would not argue this one. I could argue that Microsoft has their own R&D to contribute to .NET, but I'm not really sure that's a great counter on my side. MS has traditionally been weak in the academic world, but this is also starting to change.

17) Government Approved - again, it looks as though you skimmed the article source, found the line you liked and made a list item out of it (poor Rolf, he always gets yelled at for doing that :). The article is mainly yet another "split down the middle" testimonial (it advocates both, so in that sense .NET is "Government Approved" as well).

18) More Homogeneous and Less Complex Environment - are you kidding? There are members of this board who must be thinking "he really said it's less complex"? Never mind the fact that J2EE is "littered" by much of the same stuff (CORBA anyone?) and as I stated earlier is dependent on JVM version idiosyncracies as well as OS idiosyncracies (go ahead, try to tell me it always runs the same on every platform. but you have to keep a straight face while you do it). You also assume in your reasoning that all Java programmers are at the same level because you all read and write the same code syntax. That's a very common misconception normally limited to junior coders. Your knowledge of the platform suggests that you are beyond that level, so this gross leap in logic surprises me.

19) More Deployment Options - .NET has class libraries, winforms, web forms, windows services, web services, control (widget) libraries, console applications, deployment applications, mobile forms applications, pocket PC applications and a few others. I guess I'm missing the point.

20) More Searchable References - so what you're hoping for here is that quantity wins over quality? What were the relevance percentages on all of those Java hits? Or the .NET for that matter? Again, you fail to make a valid point with search results (again, poor Rolf always getting flayed for doing this :).

21) Better support for Software Process Best Practices - really? So all those crappy Java developers I've met were faking it? This has less to do with technology and more to do with people. All kinds of tools exist on both sides to support this; they don't mean anything unless they're actually used (and PEOPLE on both sides do this too).

22) Mature Object Oriented Relational Mapping Tools - can't really argue this one at face value, but this assumes (in supporting that ".NET is a Joke") that all OO development MUST be done with O/R mapping tools to succeed. There are others to aid in this, and it's not like the CONCEPTS aren't known and used, .NET developers just have to do more grunt work to make it happen.

23) More Productive Coding Tools - yikes, even some of your more boisterous Java advocates won't touch this one. I guess it all comes down to personal experience, but I hear an awful lot of "I'm a Java developer, but the IDE tools are awful" and similar stuff on this board and elsewhere. And yes, before you ask I HAVE heard of Eclipse; it's promising.

24) Cross Platform Integration with Other Languages - two words: Web Services. Do not think that this is not exactly why MS is so hot into the concept with .NET. Other than Web Services being the new "IT" more software vendors, it allows MS to have its cake and eat it too (control its own platform, provide technology to build apps to talk to others). Same reason all the other big boys are in this pool. Next...

25) Higher Paying Jobs - you have nothing to support this. Did you speak to the Bureau of Labor Statistics? This is right off of Sun's "Java for VB Programmers" page (as in, why you should switch). Interesting aside: Sun itself can't think VB programmers are too stupid, setting up a targeted message specifically to convert those into Java programmers.

Well, I think I've made my point that most of this limited subset of your list is arguable at best and outright false at worst. Now, if I really apply quantitative reasoning to this little exercise, I can assume that my sampling follows a normal distribution (bear with me, I'm trying to justify grad school here :) and can therefore derive the likelihood that the rest of the list is similarly affected. Unless, of course, I inadvertently pulled all my example points from the section of your log entitled "things I can't possibly back up, but just KNOW in my heart are true".

;-)

Sorry all to rant so much on this stuff all. This kind of pointless fantasy pontification on EITHER platform (.NET or J2EE) is really starting to get to me. Software developers in this country (United States) have a lot bigger things to worry about. Anyway, as Cameron is fond of saying:

Peace (sorry to rip you off there, Cameron)

Mike

Mike,

Thank you! - for taking the time and the trouble.

At the University we played with "debating", you were given a subject you were supposed to argue for and defend. That showed clearly how you could argue for anything by sticking to smaller details so that an innocent onlooker is deceived. A good example is when people claim that USA is no better in human rights than Old Soviet Union. "In USA they put not guilty to dead!" Well I am sure that has happened - but still I am sure that no reasonable and intelligent person thinks that old Soviet Union was better in human rights than USA. That also gave me a lifelong abhorrence of this type of dishonest and hypocritical "debating".

I could easily give 500 reasons to why Java is better than the .NET - I could also just as easily give 500 reasons to why .NET is better than Java. To debate just a single one of these points could take a whole day.. However - when everything comes to and end - it is about performance, maintainability and productivity.

It is proportions that counts.

As in every "real" battle, there are important hills, fields and towns to fight about. The all-important hill in this context is Linux. The side that wins Linux will probably end up being the stronger. And when I think that Ximian - the company the have such a strong position in the Unix world (Gnome, Evolution,etc), is on the .NET side - I feel confident.

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

Does it matter ?

Most religious Unix/Java zealots I have met so far, they never
have personally evaluated .Net and do not know much about it.

Most of them say something like this - Oh that is M$ stuff - so crappy.

Most $un/Unix datacenter heads, who are in charge, I have met are very
against deploying M$ software. Most of them have next to nothing skills
in M$ technology. Yet - most of them say something like this - Oh that is MS stuff - so crappy.

So my frustration is really with the credibility of the accusers - it is a fashion trend started by the idiotic CEO - Scott McNealy - MS bashing.

This disrespect needs to change.

Last 2 years - the market has been shrinking. No new projects. Most jobs
are maint/enhancements of older java software.

I wonder what the trend will be in 2004 ?

If u are not knowledgeable about some tech - say "sorry I am not qualified
to talk about it" - not a - "Oh that is MS stuff - so crappy".

Because of the 5 year headstart - .net is behind the adoption curve behind java.

I was actually somewhat happy to see some humility amongst the mac-heads
after Windows took off - about 10 years back.

I look forward to a similar experience in next 5 years - some more
humility amongs java/$un worshippers. I think .net will take 50%
market share in next 2-3 years. There are some signs pointing that way.

.net developers are not stupid - java developers are very arrogant.

This really needs to change.

I wonder how much this is about - no matter what I will not learn anything
new - be happy with what I know. A $nix admin - does not want to learn
windows server, $un/Java-heads - do not want to learn .net, ms developers
- do not want to learn $nix.

Inertia ?

Chameleon

>
> Most religious Unix/Java zealots I have met so far, they never
> have personally evaluated .Net and do not know much about it.

I have developed production enterprise applications in both

>
> Most of them say something like this - Oh that is M$ stuff - so crappy.
>

I think the MS stuff is great, but the breadth and variety of tools available for Java (particularly free tools) just eclipses (pun intended) even VS.NET...

> Most $un/Unix datacenter heads, who are in charge, I have met are very
> against deploying M$ software. Most of them have next to nothing skills
> in M$ technology. Yet - most of them say something like this - Oh that is MS stuff - so crappy.
>

The reason for that is that MS's enterprise idioms and architecture are pathetically underdeveloped. Their solutions for the problems of large-scale transactional computing are not robust and don't scale well. Their solutions for small to medium web sites and trivial windows client applications are great, however... and SQL Server is a great mid-level database its main weakness is that it runs on windows.

> So my frustration is really with the credibility of the accusers - it is a fashion trend started by the idiotic CEO - Scott McNealy - MS bashing.
>

I agree Scott McNealy is a fool.

> This disrespect needs to change.
>
> Last 2 years - the market has been shrinking. No new projects. Most jobs
> are maint/enhancements of older java software.
>
> I wonder what the trend will be in 2004 ?
>
> If u are not knowledgeable about some tech - say "sorry I am not qualified
> to talk about it" - not a - "Oh that is MS stuff - so crappy".
>
> Because of the 5 year headstart - .net is behind the adoption curve behind java.
>

There is no compelling reason for any large organization that has any significant investment in Java development(which is about 99% of them) to switch camps. Which means that .NET development will be mostly in small to medium business and banks and large companies will continue to use Java across their enterprise.

> I was actually somewhat happy to see some humility amongst the mac-heads
> after Windows took off - about 10 years back.
>
> I look forward to a similar experience in next 5 years - some more
> humility amongs java/$un worshippers. I think .net will take 50%
> market share in next 2-3 years. There are some signs pointing that way.
>
> .net developers are not stupid - java developers are very arrogant.

99% of the microsoft developers I've come across in the past year wouldnt know their ass from a Factory Method pattern, so if they're arrogant it's probably because they're sick of explaining simple system architecture to VB developers.

>
> This really needs to change.
>
> I wonder how much this is about - no matter what I will not learn anything
> new - be happy with what I know. A $nix admin - does not want to learn
> windows server, $un/Java-heads - do not want to learn .net, ms developers
> - do not want to learn $nix.
>
> Inertia ?

From where I'm standing I am seeing a lot more new development going ahead with Java because companies know they can hire quality Java developers and the management, project managers and developers know the tools and skills. If you've ever had to explain basic inheritance principles to a bunch of VBScript programmers you know where the inertia ISN'T....
>
> Chameleon

sick of explaining simple system architecture to VB developers

And the C++ developers?

Such talk is called "overcompensation" in psychology shoptalk – usually comes from an inferiority complex.

This also explains the J2EE crowd’s obsessions with "Computer Science" and "plumbing software". At least VB developers do not have 70-80% project failure rate..

From where I'm standing I am seeing a lot more new development going ahead with Java

Shall I list the latest Java vs .NET statistic? No – then I will be - "marked as noisy" – better desist.

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

Rolf: And the C++ developers?

Not counting Sartoris Snopes, most of them switched to Java quite a while ago.

Rolf: Such talk is called "overcompensation" in psychology shoptalk – usually comes from an inferiority complex.

Rolf, projection is defined as "A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits."

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Easily share live data across a cluster!

> "plumbing software". At least VB developers do not have 70-80% project failure
> rate..

Anyone cares to explain Rolf that caring about "Computer Science" and "Plumbing software", is a way of ending up with a good software design and architecture? I'm tired of doing that to M$ developers.

Dont forget that a lot of the "Computer Science" and "Plumbing software" of J2EE was copied by you beloved M$ when it created .net...

This high level of failures is not absurd, when you do large enterprise systems development (distributed objects and transactions, cache, etc.). No VB project will ever get that big. Smaller projects have lower failure rates. So you´re comparing apples and oranges.

Mac,

It’s me again!

I can not withdraw from you this little gem from "Java Enterprise Patterns": Organize inter-service transfers according to use cases from known domain objects into a coarse-grained Composite!

I am really planning to publish a comment but time is pressing – I have come to the conclusion that I have to finish my current pressing engagements: "For and against the shoehorn – a debate" and "The use of semicolon in Jane Austen novels".

But it is something to look forward too!

Once again,
Yours truly,
Rolf Tollerud

Have you been able to figure it out Rolf, or do you need a Java developer to explain it for you?....

>
> And the C++ developers?

What, all 5 of them? Anybody in here doing any enterprise programming where the primary language of execution is C++? Hands up...

>
> Such talk is called "overcompensation" in psychology shoptalk – usually comes from an inferiority complex.
>

Hey - you're the guy who seems to spend most of your time in here overcompensating for your apparent inability to get a job doing .NET development....

> This also explains the J2EE crowd’s obsessions with "Computer Science"

OH GOD FORBID!! NOT "computer science"!! Schmuck...

>and "plumbing software". At least VB developers do not have 70-80% project failure rate..
>

Oh yes they do... In my experience, project failure rate has more to do with business and management decisions than anything else except development pathology, anyways...

More large scale projects are started using Java/J2EE thats why more of them fail. It's simply proportional, if the same projects were attempted in VB.NET the same ones would fail.


> From where I'm standing I am seeing a lot more new development going ahead with Java
>
> Shall I list the latest Java vs .NET statistic? No – then I will be - "marked as noisy" – better desist.
>
> Regards
> Rolf Tollerud

The latest statistic? Who published it? Gartner? Please Rolf, business statistics are massively just propaganda for marketing material, and bear no resemblance to reality AT ALL. I'm talking about my personal tech horizon here, what are my friends and acquaintances in the industry using, what I am being asked to use. Primarily Java except in small integration projects. Sorry bub.

Mac,

I wish to clarify -I do not mean you personally of course! I am talking of the Java/Unix world as a whole - the rhetoric used by Java advocates about Microsoft and Bill Gates, encouraging hyperbole, paranoia and hatred - is a typical sign of inferiority complex of the whole Java/Unix world vs Microsoft. Any psychologist can tell you that.
 
In addition, the enorm destruction of money in the last 2-3 years - this ridiculous high high failure rate comes from from this preoccupation with "Computer Science" and "Plumbing software. In the .NET world there are no "Big Application Servers", no "EJB, very little interest in "O/R mapping, and so on..

For light reading in the evenings I often read "Java Enterprise Patterns" - it is enormously entertaining - I can recommend it to everybody..

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

Actually there is interest in O/R mapping.
There are a few 3rd party offers but MS's ObjectSpaces was cancelled until v2.
At that moment I'd really like to see an apples to apples comparison between
J2EE CMP and .NET CMP.

Mac,

I am in almost total agreement with your statements and follow the same background (enterprise development with COM,CORBA,J2EE and .Net). However, the 2 points where I disagree are...

1. Re:<cite>There is no compelling reason for any large organization that has any significant investment in Java development(which is about 99% of them) to switch camps. Which means that .NET development will be mostly in small to medium business and banks and large companies will continue to use Java across their enterprise.</cite>

There are many large organizations that do use MS technology stack for both departmental and enterprise projects. Albeit, most of these companies (not entirely uncommon for behemoths) fall on the latter end of Moore's adoption curve.

2. The masses of unwashed (and un-educated) VB scripters do have an analog (of disporportionate size) in the Java world (and PHP, etc). While I have found that I generally am more impressed with the Java developers on the teams I have led, I have still been very "shocked and awed" (a popular nascent expression) at some of the Java systems and developers that I have inherited/worked with.

Finally, these observations lead me to believe that...
1. MS still needs to supply a joystick development environment (otherwise they risk the loss of the VB coders) that can slowly (quickly is just an unreasonable expectation) wean these developers off of milk (scripting and monolithic patterns) onto gerber (bettern design constructs) and finally meat (a "software engineer"). They seem to be doing this by promotion of separation of concerns (ASP.Net code behind) and a more ingrained OO approach in the languages. Subsequently, the Java side needs some simplification (probably achievable by tool consolidation). The plethora of tools in the Java arena is even confusing to me. I believe I have compiled Java code in Emacs, Together, Forte, Eclipse, VAJ, SlickEdit, and CantRememberTheOthers in the last few years. This is just ridiculous (mostly on my part). The Eclipse project, SunOne, Uml2Ejb, etc seem to be attacking this simplification of tools and techniques problem.

2. we (the veterans) need to do our part to help raise our adopted progeny (the programming neophytes of both the Java and MS camps)

Have a good weekend,
Lance

It is not just that I was marked two times "as noisy" in this thread! Just for presenting cold statistics and for an innocent joke..
At the same time, posts that definitely were not in good taste went unscathed.
It is unfair!

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

Warning: playing with flame baits may get you burned.

I want to propose a new design pattern for the repository at TSS: I would call it Troll Control:

Problem: an specific theme public forum has some inconvenient users, acting in what could be called bad behaviour, throwing flame baits and FUD in posts, adding nothing to the advancement of the comunity.

Solution: create the possibility of marking their posts as noisy, and when a certain number of marks are hit, don't show those posts anymore, just their title, unless someone selects them for reading purposedly.

Regards,
Henrique Steckelberg

Look at WROK presss it went belly up with .Not books

No one is buying .Not.

for $4 / share.

Then what ?

Most java developers develop software on Windows, not on Solaris.

Why is that, $un/Java religious zealots ?

Chameleon

There are some who thinks that the Java developers are are putting on airs lately. What is your opinion?

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

10 years back, every corp I used to work with,
there would be Mac developer sitting along the Windows
developer.

Man did they have a protectionist attitude !

Now-a-days Sun/Java developers have what a holier-than-thou
attitude ! It is even worse then Mac-heads.

Sun/Java/Linux is not going to win over the whole world.
Yes some client side/ server side market share is going
to increase or decrease - accept this.

Respect other programmers knowledge ! Be it MS, PHP or the next thing.

Chameleon

... Java/Linux is not going to win over the whole world.

The Mac developers used to say the same thing about Windows. Most of us could see where the future was going, so we did Windows development.

Seems like you've ended up in the Mac camp this time, so to speak.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Easily share live data across a cluster!

Well I have nothing against them, but you wouldn't like that your sister married one! Funny how they think that Java and Linux are buddies together forever when most distributions not even carry Java!:-)

I fear for that a "divorce" is imminent..

Regards
Rolf Tollerud
"For a while he was well-regarded and considered a credit to the community"

WROX Press failed because, despite having been very good in the "Programmer to Programmer" book space at one time, they were a) starting to churn out "shelf-space" filler crap at an alarming rate (the books on J# and mySQL Replication were my personal favorite examples) and b) were by many accounts experiencing the same mismanagement woes that have buried many companies before them. Check out the poor soul in the thread dedicated to this right now on TSS for some horror stories about being one of their authors. Their .NET books were probably some of their better movers at the end.

Sorry. Plenty of people are "buying" the technology as you say. It's nowhere near as prevalent as J2EE on the enterprise level right now, but it's not a non-player and it's early. Careful about being dismissive.