I've been developing for over a decade, and had the "privilege" of working on .NET for 2-3 years exclusively. I hated it and couldn't wait to get back to Java. I for one value the freedom of choice that the Java ecosystem offers, and disagree with the concept that there is too much freedom. There is never too much freedom. Can it be misused? Sure. But the rich ecosystem that the Java platform is offering these days is unmatched. As an open source developer I couldn't value this enough.
C# is very nice as a language, it feels more evolved than Java in some aspects, though the differences are not as great for most common tasks. The Java platform already offers language options that complement Java and extend the capabilities of the platform to whichever field you are interested in. I'm learning Scala and it's all Dick's fault :) Being an open source advocate, I did try Mono back in the day and consider it a great technical achievement, but it defeats the purpose for the reasons that others have laid out here. It is always going to be playing catch up, and there is the sense that the interoperability story will be as good as Microsoft feels it wants it to be. .NET is too tightly controlled by one corporation, so no thank you. On the topic of developers, and I'm sure nobody in this list applies to this concept, I found myself in dismay when working with .NET developers (not all, but a scary high percentage). They knew how to use Visual Studio very well, but basic programming concepts, knowledge of patterns, even object orientation were completely absent. They could whip out ASP.NETpages very fast, but the scalability and maintenance of those systems was a nightmare. I think Microsoft has succeeded in commoditizing a large sector of the development space, by dumbing it down (the Visual Basic crowd that transitioned to VB.NET, what a disaster). Yes, there are power users, but the masses must be avoided like a zombie crowd. I have found a similar environment in the Java corporate world, but I think it's not as bad, there are always a couple of guys that stand out and make things work. On top of this, .NET realistically has to be run on Windows, an operating system that has bit me in the rear end enough times in the past to make me want to run away from it like the plague. As a server side developer, there are certainly better deployment platforms, and while technically it's possible to run Mono on Linux, try convincing a Microsoft IT shop to do that. I share the sentiment of the Java Posse. I'm not interested in .NET, I only run Windows on a VM when I need to test software for that platform, and most of the business of the company that I work for is based on the Java platform along with some C, .NET has absolutely nothing to offer for us (we produce cross platform open source geospatial server software). I realize that there might be others who want to hear more about .NET, which is fine, and thankfully there are other resources to get that information. -- Juan Marín Otero GIS Consultant On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 5:09 AM, Casper Bang <[email protected]> wrote: > Luckily Mono will go down sooner rather than later, together with its >> sponsor, SUSE, although it remains to be seen if Id de Icaza will go down >> with it, too. >> > > Incorrect... again. *sigh* SUSE got sold to The Attachmate Group and > closed down Mono sponsorship last year. Miguel de Igaza formed Xamarin and > formed a partnership agreement with Attachmate, where Xamarin was granted > all associated IP rights while Attachmate's was promised support to > existing customers from Xamarin. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Java Posse" group. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/k7VbQ1IHrMcJ. > > 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. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "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.
