Re: Comparison of Java, C# for development on Windows and future for them

On 8 Jan 2003 01:28:11 -0800, belindacur_at_yahoo.com (Belinda) wrote:

>Hi All
>
>I am a C++ programmer and I am now planning to make a transition to
>either C# or Java. I am not sure whether to take up C# or Java.

> I am supposed to make this
>decision for my company I am free to choose C# or Java.
>
>Which must I choose and why ?

My reply is simply: it depends on your customers. Unless you have a terrible market force (you can do something nobody else can), usually your customers will step in and say they "have a standard", and force your decision; moreover, in my experience, much of the work is rewriting, integrating, maintaining someone else's code. In which language is this code is your customer's choice, not yours.

Sliding to a more personal note, if the decision matters for _you_, do not choose! Learn both! Believe me, in ten year's time C# and Java will not exist any more, or will be so different that even their mums will not recognise them! Think of windows 3.1 and XP! Or Unix un the 90's and Linux now! I myself learnt Pascal, Basic (ZX Spectrum!), Lisp, Prolog, Clipper, C, C++, the language of MetaCard, the language of ToolBook, Perl, Visual Basic, HTML, SQL, Java along my
15-year career. I wait for an occasion to learn C# now. Focusing on a language is a bad choice in the long run, IMHO; of course, this may not be an issue for your company, but it could be for you. You should ever improve your _programming_, which is the hard part, OO techniques, Extreme Programming, patterns, whatever is language-independent, because it is due to last.

Language-specific issues will disappear with the next release of Windoze, or of the Java Platfrom, or whatever, and new issues will creep in.

Of course, if you adopt a "generic" approach, you will never achieve complete, deep knowledge of any single language or technology; but you'll *survive*! Think of yourself in ten years' time, it helps.

For instance, some ten years ago, some people invested heavily in knowledge of Terminate and Stay Resident (TSRs) programs, in the days of DOS. Now their knowledge has become totally irrelevant. Let the same thing not happen to you!

Still on a different tone; I'm really amazed at the civil responses of this newsgroup to an essentially religious question; an analogous question in comp.lang.perl.* would have provoked an uproar of indignation! Why, we are perl people, sure perl is better than anything else! Here, instead, polite and equidistant answers...

Are you all really thoughtful and objective, or do you already hate java so much as to advise a different (largely unknown) language?

HTH
  Andrea

--
Andrea Spinelli
IT&T, Via Sigismondi 40, Villa d'Alme', BG, Italy
e-mail: aspinelli_at_-deletehere-imteam.it  phone: +39-035-636029
"Truth hurts, but pimples much more!"