C# vs Java...

For the purposes of your project, I don't see why you'd use Java. Java certainly has its place, particularly if you're going to use/are using a lot of non-Wintel stuff. Otherwise, I think .NET is where it's at. Lots of people (including myself) get worried about vendor lock-in, even if that vendor is the nigh-invincible Microsoft. So I can understand then getting cold-feet, but it seems like they have little good to contribute so they piss and moan to seem like they are doing something. - Stud Sinister

ouch

Okay, well, four weeks into our implementation project, after a technical design flow document has been circulated for weeks and discussed in countless meetings, one of our consultants just happens to mention this week that the way we have it mapped out is wrong... To make matters worse, we may have to develop some or all of the user interface in Visual Basic 6.0 (yuck) because SAP distributes a hybrid of VS60 called Mobile Application Studio. No one mentioned this until this week, and even then they consultants weren't all that clear on it and were unable to answer some simple, basic technical questions. For the ungodly amount of money we are paying these bozos, they had better start coming up with some concrete answers for me very soon... so there ya have it.. the continuing saga of As the Implemention Turns..... -James

Oh? Do tell. Clue us in. What's the latest poop, scoop?

The more I get into this project, the more I believe that there is a special place in HELL for SAP Consultants.

Good luck !!!! Don't forget to share your success stories. BTW: Word "failure" throws a compilation error in .NET.

James, there's one other point that... while not exactly a show stopper... is certainly worth mentioning. hmm... ok, 2 points: 1) .NET uses wrapper classes to house NATIVE OS-supported GUI controls. Unlike Swing... which is a nice idea... the .NET layer is free to do what it wants under the covers and, rightly, uses the OS provided GUI widgets to talk to the users. Swing on the other hand not only reinvents the wheel (jeez, I've been using that phrase alot today), but in my opinion (and yes, I've written LOTS of java code) does so very poorly. This means that .NET on say... Aqua for Mac... will use Aqua GUI widgets under the covers. On Linux, one of about 1000 X-providers under the covers. Java continues to deploy Swing and has performance that varies greatly from platform to platform, and often times the appearance is not as nice as the OS-provided widgets. 2) GUI performance in Java is abysmal at best. Just horrid. It's a good fast language that seems to be pretty well tuned, but swing is just horrible for any kind of performance at all. Clipping sucks. Repainting sucks. Event response time sucks. Having said all that, I love Java. I do however think that C# is a better java than java and in a few years when others step up and support multi-platform usage, it will become the "cat's ass" of OO RAD languages. The .NET framework is more "fresh" than Java. They learned alot from watching varying success stories in Java's history and made the .NET runtime better... better in terms of convenience and better in terms of namespace organization and "fluidity". Can't really think of a better term, but to me it's easier to get thru' the tedious "busy work" crap and concentrate on the "business" logic in .NET than in Java. *shrugs* I don't believe that Java will die and I don't believe that .NET/C# will be the only game in town... ever... but I do believe that microsoft is never going anywhere and I do believe that nothing will ever unseat Windows from the desktop. The server market... oddly... is way more fluid than desktops. Look at how many server OSes there have been thru' the years... and thru' it all, Windows and it's various flavors... has always been our gateway to the servers.

Very good response Judah.. here is an article on this subject that I found to be very well done http://www.cprogrammingtrends.com/cprogrammingtrends-43-20030610ABetterJavathanJava.html -James

Well good luck with that James. If I may throw in my $.02, I'd like to point out some other areas where .Net is superior to J2EE. I should say that I've been writing Java stuff long before I ever got involved in .Net, so I am not as biased as you may think. 1. Mutiple language support. While there are some languages that compile to Java bytecode, this is really more a hack than planned design. .Net's ability to run applications built with many different languages provides a option unique to .Net: the choice of programming language being a matter of preference instead of interoperability, power of the language, etc. 2. From a pure technical standpoint, .Net's high performance collections, indexers, properties, and delegate/event model provide a much cleaner code base than Java's, greatly reducing code bloat. 3. JIT'ed machine code - while .Net assemblies are JIT'd to high performance machine code, Java bytecode requires a virtual machine execute it. Not only is this slower performance-wise, but it also can be messy and inconsistent with different VM vendors, such as MS, SUN, IBM, among others. 4. The standard. Yes, C# and the CLI is an ECMA standard. Java is not. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/ecma/ 5. .Net is the future: as long as MS controls the desktop, .Net has secured the top spot in desktop development. VS has only been out since 2002; .Net is still in the process of being adopted, but make no mistake, .Net will take over desktop applications on the Win32 platform, will be integrated side-by-side with Java in the business sector, and even has a decent chance to make a big impact on the web. 6. Backing of the most powerful company in tech, the goliath MS. .Net is going to be huge, perhaps the biggest impact on the computer industry since Windows 95. Intel and HP also have protected interests in .Net. Comparitively, Java is a worn out shoe compared to the .Net platform - Sun is trying desperately to keep developers on the J2EE platform and protect us from going to .Net. Sun, a relatively weak company competing against IBM and HP in some areas, and against MS in 2 big areas, will lose this battle. Just as Apple lost to MS in the desktop war, just as Borland lost the C++ development tools war against MS, just as Nintendo lost out to MS in the console wars, just as AOL is losing to MS in the IM and ISP wars, so will Sun lose out to MS in the dev platform wars. I'm not trying to start an argument here - these are visible evidences of the leviathan power that is pushing the .Net platform. 7. Innovation. C# is the result of experimenting with many business and educational languages, taking lessons from the great languages of the past: foreach iteration from VB, simple language layout, initialization, easy string manipulation, and garbage collection from Java, and support for direct memory manipulation as in C++, while still learning from the benefits of smaller niche languages like Lisp or Python. For example, the Whidbey release of C# will include support a Lisp-like lambda function called an anonymous method, in addition to providing support for new iterator constructs and the highly anticipated generics feature. Java, on the other hand, is truely lagging behind in innovation; language changes are submitted to committee and are often pigeon-holed or take eons for approval. All in all, I hope I never have to write another line of Java. .Net is here, and I for one an ecstatic to be part of it.

Anthony, I agree with most of your post, but you are off the mark when it comes to Microsoft's view on SAP. The folks at MS have realized they are missing out on a large chunk of high-profit sales and integration work when it comes to SAP. They realize that SAP R/3 is running primarily on Win32 based systems, and a growing number are using SQL 2000 for a backend. take a look at this site.... http://www.microsoft-sap.com/default.aspx The problem with Great Plains and Solomon is that enough companies have already invested in SAP, that they just are not willing to take the enourmous financial loss by dumping it and going with a product that causes only slightly fewer headaches (as in Great Plains). -James

The truth is that your company has already made a screwball decision by choosing SAP. To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a successful SAP implementation. All SAP implementations are designed to extract the MAXIMUM amount of money out of a company by bringing in lots of SAP or SAP endorsed consultants to do things like coding Java interfaces. (Sound familiar?) So, you are starting from an adverse position and trying to fix your problem. I assume your management would not consider the smart move and dump SAP before you go any further. Therefore, I'll try and offer some helpful info. .NET is superior to Java in several ways. The .NET class libraries are somewhat more robust than those found in Java (not by much but they are slightly better). Additionally, if you are directly interfacing with Microsoft Databases like SQL Server 2K, nothing will offer you better performance than .NET. C# applications running under the .NET framework offer a little better performance than Java applications running on the same box. With today's hardware, that is generally a minor consideration. But since you asked... The bottom line though is that if the Java libraries from SAP are more thorough than the Microsoft ones, then Java may be your platform. Yes, I would consider code maintainability but functionality is more important. .NET is a superior framework. This is evidenced by the Mono project which is implementing a non-Microsoft .NET system for Windows, Linux, and other O/Ss. Microsoft is probably NEVER going to provide significant support for SAP other than to encourage people to migrate away from it. Microsoft recent purchased Great Plains and Solomon which are high end accounting systems. Microsoft's plan is to convert Great Plains into a direct competitor to SAP. Therefore, I don't think they'll (Microsoft) be working very hard to help them (SAP) solidify their customer base. Anyway... Anthony

Okay, lets take this a step further.. is there any ONE TECHNICAL area where C# surpasses Java? I know we are all partial to C#, otherwise we wouldn't be here on these forums, bt I'm looking for some area where .Net has a clear technical edge over Java. -James

1. From a company perspectie, code maintainability is a BIG ISSUE. Since you are a Microsoft shop, so your company already knows Microsoft technologies, which means no need to hire more people with Java expertise. 2. You dont want to develop your products with different technologies. Stick with the good one. 3. .NET is the future of programming and designed to build future applications (not the past). 4. Microsoft definitely provides better support and communities and now Microsoft is building solutions that can be customized by different users for their own applications. and a lot more .., 5. .NET cuts your development and deployment time a lot in compare to older technologies. Stick with .NET. If your company needs .NET consultants, YOU KNOW WHO TO CONTACT ;).