Java vs .NET Again
Justin James in a Q&A tries to answer questions about Java & .NET. While most of these questions have been asked for several years, they seem to be still just as relevant as 8 years back.
He answers whether Java and .NET will continue to compete? How will Java SE 7 fare against the .NET CLR? Will one runtime beat the other in the foreseeable future? Is Java development cheaper than .NET development, and, if so, will people move to Java to save money? How many scripting languages would a Java developer need to know to be as effective as they would be in .NET?
While the JVM and the .NET CLR are similar beasts at a technical definition level, both have their own markets, neither of which is very agile. It’s not like someone who has built their infrastructure around .NET servers and IIS can wake up tomorrow and move everything to Java or vice versa…
The cost of the tools is inconsequential in comparison to the pain of a switch. There are two exceptions to this scenario. The first exception is in the case of a new company (or someone choosing between one or the other), and there is no cost of switching. In that scenario, Java still isn’t any cheaper, since Microsoft gives away free copies of Visual Studio (the Express editions), and if you are a new company, the BizSpark program is a way of getting three years of MSDN and Microsoft licenses for free — that’s not too shabby…
Read entire article at techrepublic
It’s quite amusing how the Java & .NET world keep going at each other without any clear winners. However lately it does seem like the Java world has been far more occupied with scripting languages & LAMP than with Microsoft & .NET. For instance at the recent IndicThreads Conference On Java, .NET was hardly ever mentioned in any discussions around the Java platform.
