logica:

OK, you write a C/C++ "connector" code that's probably no more than 3 lines. How does that make it such a bad thing? Besides, the only practical use of JNI is to provide access to "legacy code" which most enterprises will best invest in replacing anyway.

In .NET that connector code is written in whatever .NET language you are using right within your other code. No need for non .NET files. The ease of calling native code in .NET is what facilitates the writing of many gui toolkit bindings like GTK#, Qt#, wx.NET e.t.c.
My friend, legacy codes are not going to be replaced anytime in the forseeable future. Almost all windows dlls and linux/unix shared libraries are written in C or C++ and nobody is going to replace them with Java or .NET libraries.

IG:

In .NET that connector code is written in whatever .NET language you are using right within your other code. No need for non .NET files. The ease of calling native code in .NET is what facilitates the writing of many gui toolkit bindings like GTK#, Qt#, wx.NET e.t.c.

. . . and what exact advantage does that provide?

IG:

My friend, legacy codes are not going to be replaced anytime in the forseeable future. Almost all windows dlls and linux/unix shared libraries are written in C or C++ and nobody is going to replace them with Java or .NET libraries.

When I refer to legacy code, I refer to custom code written for enterprise/business purposes, which have been tried and tested for decades, and are considered reliable. And most can be easily ported to Java these days, considering the stability and safety offered by the language. Which Windows DLLs could I possibly be calling for what ever purpose?

IG:

Why complicate things with two runtimes and two compilers. Why cant we have a single compiler and runtime that has a server mode option.

Pretty obvious; as you mentioned the slow start-up. It's for more responsive client apps (meaning quicker launching of apps). Users are generally not very patient with slow loading apps. Maybe in the future, they may converge.

logica:

. . . and what exact advantage does that provide?

1-subtle errors in the use of JNI can destabilize the entire JVM in ways that are very difficult to reproduce and debug.
2-You do not have to code any C or C++.
4-There is no chance of making mistake in the C/C++ connector code cos it doesn't exist.

logica:

When I refer to legacy code, I refer to custom code written for enterprise/business purposes, which have been tried and tested for decades, and are considered reliable. And most can be easily ported to Java these days, considering the stability and safety offered by the language. Which Windows DLLs could I possibly be calling for what ever purpose?

You cannot replace those C/C++ codes. At the lower level everything is in the native format of the OS and at some point you will have to call those codes. Without calling native code everything you do in Java or .NET will be limited to the VM you are running.

logica:

Pretty obvious; as you mentioned the slow start-up. It's for more responsive client apps (meaning quicker launching of apps). Users are generally not very patient with slow loading apps. Maybe in the future, they may converge.

The benchmark doesn't use the client mode VM which I believe is slower than .NET. I am looking forward to the day they converge.

I am not saying that Java is bad, it's just not as good as .NET in most instances. There are many .NET developers that love Java. Some even went ahead and developed a Java Virtual Machine and some part of the class library with .NET. Did you get that JVM developed with .NET, it's called IKVM. Check it out at http://www.ikvm.net/

http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/tour-de-babel
This very famous rant by Steve Yegge, a veteran Amazon programmer, in his blog compares the most common programming languages and gives their pluses and minuses. Enjoy.

IG:

1-subtle errors in the use of JNI can destabilize the entire JVM in ways that are very difficult to reproduce and debug.
2-You do not have to code any C or C++.
4-There is no chance of making mistake in the C/C++ connector code cos it doesn't exist.

And who says you cannot similarly make errors in the code you write for .NET; human error is expected when you are developing code. Therefore these drawbacks are not specific to only JNI.

IG:

You cannot replace those C/C++ codes.

Any code can be replaced. Most are not even C/C++ code, but ANY code can be replaced or ported.

logica:

I asked how much advantage this offers to Business/Enterprise development (which you should know has little to do with GUI).
A whole bunch of mumbo-jumbo which doesn't point to the exact difference between Anonymous Delegates in C# and Anonymous Inner Classes in Java. For instance events + observer/observable pattern is entrenched in Java.

"Business/Enterprise development"? You simply don't understand the topic, so you are making up a fresh one.
I will very kindly explain it to you; the topic is not about Business/Enterprise development. Far from it! Rather, as the title says, it is an argument about "7 Reasons Why .net languages are Not Better Than Java Languages", Do you now get it?

As to the "mumbo jumbo" thing, we all understand that some of us get rude when defeated by superior logic. Do you know the "exact difference" between Anonymous Delegates in C# and Anonymous Inner Classes in Java?

Beaf:

You simply don't understand the topic, so you are making up a fresh one.
I will very kindly explain it to you; the topic is not about Business/Enterprise development. Far from it! Rather, as the title says, it is an argument about "7 Reasons Why .net languages are Not Better Than Java Languages", Do you now get it?

Yes, that's the topic; my argument is related enough to the topic, as that is all I am concerned with - Business/Enterprise development. Java has been leveraged as a Business/Enterprise development platform (and this has been stated many times without number for it to sink in by now), therefore if you are going to compare any language, you have to do it from that point of view; therefore you are the one suffering from comprehension deficit.

Beaf:

As to the "mumbo jumbo" thing, we all understand that some of us get rude when defeated by superior logic. Do you know the "exact difference" between Anonymous Delegates in C# and Anonymous Inner Classes in Java?

Again comprehension deficit: there is no "exact difference", after all Anonymous Delegates merely copied what was already part of standard Java and put on a veneer of "extras" which were also already part of Java, albeit existing independent patterns. You really do flatter yourself if you think you presented anything close to an argument or logical for that matter.

logica:

Yes, that's the topic; my argument is related enough to the topic, as that is all I am concerned with - Business/Enterprise development. Java has been leveraged as a Business/Enterprise development platform (and this has been stated many times without number for it to sink in by now), therefore if you are going to compare any language, you have to do it from that point of view; and you are the one suffering from comprehension deficit.

What a narrow minded argument! The truth is that you realise that you can only make any argument (even if a very poor one) for Java, by attempting to limit the argument to as few language features as possible. "Business/Enterprise development platform" my foot! Enh enh! Come out in the open, the topic places everything on the table, no pick and choose.
I even though you were going to offer some reason why swing and swt offered something for "Business/Enterprise development" that WPF / Silverlight didn't. I really thought you had some new and wicked angle; shame it never came.

logica:

Again comprehension deficit: there is no "exact difference", after all Anonymous Delegates merely copied what was already part of standard Java and put on a veneer of "extras" which were also already part of Java, albeit existing independent patterns. You really do flatter yourself if you think you presented anything close to an argument or logical for that matter.

I will make this simple, C# deals with closures naturally through anonymous delegates. With Java, its a forge with anonymous inner classes.

U guys should stop this. . .! Professionals dont argue like this. . .! Use a language that gives you best results and leave the next person. , ! In this day of XML and JSON, it means we can all work together without breaking a sweat. . .! If .NET gives you your desired results, stick to it and if its java, good for you. I am a java programmer and i have been doing web and desktop for 6 yrs. I HAVE NEVER HAD A REASON TO LOOK ELSEWHERE!!!! Java gives me all i want and i am enjoying every bit of my programming career.

If there is any need for me to do a project that I know java can handle well (which i havent come accross) i will gladly use .NET if its better.

The times u guys are spending on arguments can be used to develop libraries that we can port into the two languages, LIKE USING A .NETs listview component in Java or Using Java sockets in .NET. . .or using the strengths of Java on the web in your .NET apps. . .anything at all. . .

Like i said earlier, CONSUMERS DONT CARE ABOUT LANGUAGES, ALL THEY WANT IS SOLUTIONS!!!!!!

Beaf:

I even though you were going to offer some reason why swing and swt offered something for "Business/Enterprise development" that WPF / Silverlight didn't. I really thought you had some new and wicked angle; shame it never came.

Why in the World would I want to talk about Swing and SWT, which have no bearing on the client-side of the typical N-Tier application these days? There is an embarrassment of alternatives for client-end: good examples are the Google Gears and Scriptaculous; which of course are all pluggable frameworks on top of others like Struts and Spring.

logica:

Why in the World would I want to talk about Swing and SWT, which have no bearing on the client-side of the typical N-Tier application these days? There is an embarrassment of alternatives for client-end: good examples are the Google Gears and Scriptaculous; which of course are all pluggable frameworks on top of others like Struts and Spring.

. . .How about, because the OP specifically mentioned swt? . . .But of course, you never corrected the OP, instead we had the slightly wierd attack on WPF and Silverlight as not being of any value to "Business/Enterprise development".

Beaf:

As for Anonymous Inner Classes, I really love to refer to this list all the time for C#'s advantages;
    * Much more concise syntax in C# with lambda expressions and anonymous methods
    * Type inference
    * General support for delegates in the language (method group conversions etc)
    * Multi-cast delegates with language support
    * Events (simple syntax for the observer pattern based on delegates)
    * Asynchronous execution via the system thread-pool
    * Expression trees with language support
Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1246534/real-advantages-of-net-delegates-over-javas-anon-classes

Copy 'n' paste.
Yeah C# is great, its probably more powerful than Java but there's a pattern known by most scientists and many other disciplines, its called the Golden rule . If you apply this to programming language features we can come to the following conclusions:

Only 20% of a programming language features will account for 80% of written code.

What this helps language designers and programmers do is prioritize and determine which features are most important and where research focus should be placed.

I programmed C# for 2 years, and i almost always had to refer back to the manuals when using delegates.
Its a nice feature but its not better than interfaces, it compliments it. What this means is that there is a right and wrong time to use the feature, how many programmers know this ? How many gunslingers bother to find out when not to use it ?
(There's a tendency for a guy thats good with a hammer to see all problems as nails).

Every Language has a price in terms of complexity and understanding, in my opinion C# is tilting to the complexity side

MsTom:

@logica and beaf

What is the name of the 'single java book' that you read? Would like to get my hand on it.

I cannot even remember the name as it's been a while. Fact is, I wouldn't even have had any use for the book if I had the kind of Internet access back then, as I now have.

Beaf, I will like to get informed as I proceed in learning it. johnsonolujayetan@yahoo.com is my email

look at what Steve Yegge said after praising Java over C++

On the other hand, in addition to being a language, a virtual machine, a huge set of class libraries, a security model, and a portable bytecode format, Java is a religion. So you can't trust anyone who loves it too much. It's a tricky business to hire good Java programmers.

Spot on

IG:

look at what Steve Yegge said after praising Java over C++Spot on

. . .as you can see he said nothing about .NET, I strongly suspect he would've said something quite similar.

Well everything about Microsoft sulks. Just look at Internet Explorer for instance;even MS OS sulks, I just moved over to Apple MAC. C# copied java period. Java solves all problems simple. What i hate most in life is VB.

For statistics you can check this one out

http://www.langpop.com/

C# is the way to go my brothers. Silverlight is taking over soon. So you better go and learn C# or VB.net

It took me about 8 months to find a good C# programmer + SQL Server in london, last year. the agencies I have been working with are having problems fill those skill gap.

For those of you in Nigeria, this may not apply. But if you are in the UK, if you want to last, you better throw that Java in the bin, and upgrade you skills

BAC:

. . . you better throw that Java in the bin

Which do u refer to: /bin or /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin ?

BAC:

C# is the way to go my brothers. Silverlight is taking over soon. So you better go and learn C# or VB.net

It took me about 8 months to find a good C# programmer + SQL Server in london, last year. the agencies I have been working with are having problems fill those skill gap.

For those of you in Nigeria, this may not apply. But if you are in the UK, if you want to last, you better throw that Java in the bin, and upgrade you skills

Tell them jare! People continue promoting the dying language that is java. Outside the developing World Java is comatose and will be buried in a few years time.
The developing World cannot afford high quality IT, so open source is the mantra. The moment you cross the sea, forget Java; everybody wants to be productive and running.
If there's anybody out there thats ready to die for open source, I advice them to pick up Ruby. Ruby (especially) and C# are the final nail in Java's coffin.

craziest:

Well everything about Microsoft sulks. Just look at Internet Explorer for instance;even MS OS sulks, I just moved over to Apple MAC. C# copied java period. Java solves all problems simple. What i hate most in life is VB.

I gather you have never seen the video below.
You could almost say that apple is a branch of MS; they just keep you religous folk yapping to move products of the shelf. Enjoy!

[flash=425,344]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY&hl=en_GB&fs=1&[/flash]

Here we see Steve Jobs & the almost bankrupt at the time Apple Computer making a temporary deal with Bill Gates & Microsoft. The crowd was not too happy about it.

craziest:

Well everything about Microsoft sulks. Just look at Internet Explorer for instance;even MS OS sulks, I just moved over to Apple MAC. C# copied java period. Java solves all problems simple. What i hate most in life is VB.

The problem is that you got everything twisted. Unlike the way Sun held Java hostage and stunted for long, Microsoft has freed .NET and published the standard with ECMA. The technology's name is Common Language Infrastructure. .NET is only the Microsoft implementation of the CLI. If you don't like Microsoft then go for Mono which is an open source implementation of the CLI. Even the super haters of Microsoft, the GNU folks have their own implementation called dotGNU.

You see Mr craziest, this whole debate is not about love or hate for technologies but about more superior and less superior technologies. I love Java but I know it doesn't seem to have a future. Yeah C# copied Java but corrected everything that sucks in Java. Guess what?, Java also copied a lot of C and C++ and sometimes made things worse instead of improving them.

craziest:

For statistics you can check this one out

http://www.langpop.com/

Interesting statistics. So are you now implying that the more popular the language the better features it has?

Look at what they said on the site

We have attempted to collect a variety of data about the relative popularity of programming languages, mostly out of curiousity. To some degree popularity does matter - however it is clearly not the only thing to take into account when choosing a programming language.

Going further

these results are not scientific. They are interesting nonetheless, and are an attempt to glean as much data as possible notwithstanding the fact that gathering precise data is impossible. We hope you find them interesting as well.

oluagness:

Beaf, I will like to get informed as I proceed in learning it. johnsonolujayetan@yahoo.com is my email

Unfortunately, I will find it difficult to offer help outside NL because of a very tight schedule. But feel free to post any issues you have here and I am sure you will get a response from myself or some other person.

IG:

Interesting statistics. So are you now implying that the more popular the language the better features it has?

It really doesn't matter, as it was a good rebuttal to the silly stats posted earlier: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9884500-16.html

logica:

It really doesn't matter, as it was a good rebuttal to the silly stats posted earlier: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9884500-16.html

Thanks man. As long as microsoft continue to sit on C# it will be a disaster like IE, i can guaranty that. Java for life.

Beaf:

I gather you have never seen the video below.
You could almost say that apple is a branch of MS; they just keep you religous folk yapping to move products of the shelf. Enjoy!

That was far long ago 1997. man 13 years back it was temporary agreement

Beaf:

I gather you have never seen the video below.
You could almost say that apple is a branch of MS; they just keep you religous folk yapping to move products of the shelf. Enjoy!

Another thing you fail to understand in that video is that Microsoft was not developing the apple software, but Microsoft Office For MAC. So tell me who gains, people are running away from MS apps to Linux, MAC. So MS have to sell to this new group. One thing i can tell you is MS Office 07 on MAC is worst software i layed my hands on last year.

craziest:

Thanks man. As long as microsoft continue to sit on C# it will be a disaster like IE, i can guaranty that. Java for life.

I told you, you are getting everything twisted. Microsoft is not sitting on C#. I made it clear in an earlier post, maybe you didn't care to read it. C# is a published standard with the ECMA. The language specification is called ECMA 334 and is an international standard that has now been implemented by others apart from Microsoft. @craziest, it's like you are not engaging in a debate here but an argument.

Saying things like Java for life makes it difficult for one to be taken seriously. I personally do not stick to a technology unconditionally. If a better one comes out I move on. And that's how I moved from Java to .NET. That's how pragamatic software developers think, and that's why nobody codes in COBOL anymore.

IG:



Saying things like Java for life makes it difficult for one to be taken seriously. I personally do not stick to a technology unconditionally. If a better one comes out I move on. And that's how I moved from Java to .NET. That's how pragamatic software developers think, and that's why nobody codes in COBOL anymore.

Ok sir, me too I do not stick to a technology unconditionally. If a better one comes out I move on.Just that C# has not offered me anything better.my candid advice is use what works for you best C#, Java, Ruby, python, anything that solves your problem man, use it.

craziest:

Another thing you fail to understand in that video is that  Microsoft was not developing the apple software, but Microsoft Office For MAC. So tell me who gains, people are running away from MS apps to Linux, MAC. So MS have to sell to this new group. One thing i can tell you is  MS Office 07 on MAC is worst software i  layed my hands on last year.

If you had watched that video properly, you would have found that MS was actually not just putting office on the mac. Na! They were buying share's to bail out apple from bankrupcy.
Thats the reason I dont get into religous crap, you hardly know the deals the companies are making between themselves; aside from deals between apple and MS, there are deals between linux vendors and MS.
If I need to use a mac, I'll use it and I've done that a couple of times. The mac / MS argument is just rubbish.

People are into the anti-MS religion for reasons they don't understand or to "belong", but they are only being used by very sinister marketers as a captive audience. That video should have woken you up. The sponsors of the anti-MS religion are the likes of former Netscape employee's (MS killed them off by making browsers free and planted a huge IE icon in their pond on the day of their doom). Whats my stake in that fight?
I don't believe in fighting people's wars, whether MS, linux or Mac. I have both xp and vista installed on my systems at home and I'll soon be getting windows 7, I install linux every now and again, but I'm more than satisfied with MS and I don't have an iPhone thank you.