On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 12:26, Carl Jokl <[email protected]> wrote: > My experience has been that the hardcore C/C++ types who turn their > noses up at Java will equally turn their noses up at .Net.
I know at least two C++ developers who embraced the C#. Anyway several core things they still (need to) do in C++. > When I was learning .Net having a rudimentary knowledge of the Win32 > API I could see how highly coupled a lot of .Net is to the > underlying Win32 API's. I don't know much C#, but I would tend to agree - as I did a lot of Windows API in the past. > The propaganda in some books I read on .Net > implied that .Net was Microsoft's gift to the development world > and that it was open and anyone to create an implementation blah blah. > I thought logically that if Microsoft cared about any other > platforms running .Net the APIs would not be so heavily coupled to > Win32. Yes, my impression is also that it is very Windows-coupled (maybe not soo much as the previous Visual Basic), but anyway. Before I switched from VB to Java I was talking to several Microsoft employees and took several courses on C#/.net. My impression: They simply accept Mono but they don't care a hack on them (the Mono developers). Maybe things are different in reality and I have never been at Redmond. > Java for all its faults is at least genuinely O/S neutral. This can be > difficult sometimes when developers try and drill down to O/S specific > functionality. Yes, that is basically the core plus and the core minus of using Java. > One thing to note though which I have come across is that perhaps in > this community many take for granted that people want to write > software which runs on all platforms. Unfortunately a lot of people don't care > about portability. If you don't care about running an application on > anything other than Windows then is it easy to justify using Java? My experience in the last two years is that they start to care more. For example, in on of our countries newspaper about two years ago they never mentioned Ubuntu and now they do on a regular basis. So people start to recognize. > Many of the management who actually have the power to make decisions > about platforms can say 90%+ of computers are running Windows so > it is not worthwhile business wise caring about the other 10%. >From my experience it is not mostly that they don't care - they simply don't know - they maybe know that there are Macs (because of the particular hardware) but for most people having a computer implies having Windows (and well there are people who think MS Word is their OS). And even many developers whenever they are designing a new piece of software they completely forget about everything else but Windows - for new projects some either do concentrate on Windows 7 only and assume that everybody will upgrade. > It is a self perpetuating problem that businesses keep writing Windows > specific apps because it has the biggest market share. Because Windows > is required to run so many apps then businesses and consumers feel > forced to use Windows for compatibilities sake. But many switched to web applications to avoid local installations. I can tell you from the experience of myself and others that developers and support people FEAR every local installation at the client because so many installations destroy something else after they have been installed. Not really much better for updates or applying of service packs. Many switched to web applications just because no more local installation needed even if having the app as web app might not be the best choice. But this means on the other hand that if most things get web apps then underlying OS is less important in the sense of it easier to change. And you might have an idea of what sums companies are paying in form of license fees. And in the downturn they want to cut costs - so what would be more logical than cutting on license fees. > For the many shrink wrapped client application developers who target > Windows only I can see that .Net eases some of the Native pain the way > Java has but still allows far more O/S specific clean integration than > Java can easily do. more O/S-specific "clean" integration also means more dependencies: Most .net applications I know themselves use other COM-components or Windows APIs (which either means that you have to rely on particular dll versions). I had a case where Microsoft silently changed behaviour of a Windows API which caused my server application to hangup occassionally on all machines having a version of a particular dll higher than x.x.x - took me weeks to find out and nail it down. On the other hand I love my new Java apps - copying a single jar or a single folder (containing a few jars, config files and dependent jars in a lib subfolder) to the destination machine and done. OK, Java runtime 1.6 required, but this is a single dependency everyone can memorize. -- Martin Wildam -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
