I need advice: Java or .NET?

rondalescott

I work for a company that chose to standardize around Java as a development platform about four years ago. We had one legacy product implemented in VB, however, and this product happened to be the biggest performer in terms of profits, so we had a rather large development team for it and I'm the dev lead. However all other development efforts, internal and external, have been in Java and almost all of our new hires over the last few years have been Java people. As you can imagine, I'm getting REALLY sick of VB6. In any case this product is now being sunsetted. I'm moving onto another (brand-new) project, and because the company standardized around Java, the majority of developers at this point (besides me) are Java developers. The project is an internal-only data production/analysis tool that will be used by around 30 people running Windows desktops with significantly large database needs and a partial client/server architecture. Possibly, multiple frontends to the app will be employed, including a fat desktop client and a web interface with reduced functionality. I feel that .NET is the best platform choice for this app, but the Java people obviously don't, and I'm in the extreme minority. The director of Engineering will have the final say, and is open to talking about different platforms, but my voice is being essentially lost in the loud shouting of the Java promoters. My questions, then, are two-fold: 1) Am I even right to be promoting .NET? Since both platforms could sufficiently produce the app in question, should I just shut up and go with the flow? 2) And if .NET is the right choice, what can I say to convince people? Are there any online resources I can use to help with this, something I might have missed in my research? Thanks in advance. ron

Brian C Hart

I think the quesiton is rather obvious -- while .NET is nice and all, but your firm has clearly been using Java for years and lots of your people are specialists in Java...the choice is clear. There's going to be a lot of inertia to switch, even though C# and Java seem similar on the outset. And having to deal with that inertia is going to delay your project, and is going to distract your people from doing what they do best, since they will be spending lots of time resenting having to switch. Sincerely Yours, Brian Hart Department of Physics and Astronomy University of California, Irvine

Chris Austin

It is really difficult to change peoples minds one they are made up. A good way to get a little momentum on your side is to develop an internal app or a handy utility that many of your co-workers need/want on the new platform. I’ve done this and seen it done more than once. Make sure that it is a solid app or you’ll here “ahh f&@#$ing .Net” and that it highlights the advantage of the platform "Veni, Vidi, Booyah!" - Ceasar

Christian Graus

If the skillset where you work is basically Java, then J2EE is probably the right choice, UNLESS there is a chance you might get .NET work in the future, in which case, it's a good case study to develop some skills within the corperation. I use .NET at work every day, but we have J2EE teams as well, so I am learning J2EE at home. You can't learn too much, know too much or have too much experience, either in terms of depth, or breadth. Christian No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002
C# will attract all comers, where VB is for IT Journalists and managers - Michael P Butler 05-12-2002
It'd probably be fairly easy to make a bot that'd post random stupid VB questions, and nobody would probably ever notice - benjymous - 21-Jan-2003

Ed K

We've banged the question around here quite a bit and I, similar to you, am the point man for half the developers here who want to use .net. I disagree to an extent that moving java developers to .net is costly since J# is available and C# is pretty much the same. Good java developers can pick it up in a few days OTJT. I did a comparison writing a small gui that read in a file, built a tree, displayed some data and printed some reports. The java developer (an instructor for a consulting company here in Dallas so he knew his stuff :~ ) wrote the java version and I wrote the C# version. It took ~5 hours to do the C# version with all the functionality. The java program was able to read the file, display some of the tree (he had a hard time parsing the file) and could display the data for the nodes after 10 hours. He gave up at that point! :laugh: We were also able to compare asp.net to jsp/struts. We were able to build a very complex form to send data to a database in a little less than a day. The java guys (2 of them) took over four weeks. (The java guys actually worked on this project for some time before someone asked what they were doing. When we found out we looked at what they did and one of the .net guys built the app the next day.) These are small comparisons to which the java folks say don't have anything to do with anything but I look at it this way.... Java will give you job security. ;P It takes longer to develop with it, it is harder to deploy and harder to maintain. In the long run or if making money is an objective...go with .net. If job security (through lack of work) is the issue, then go with java. ed Regulation is the substitution of error for chance.