.NET vs Java (was [Auth]Re - [Auth} A simple server-side authent ication scheme)

[Nick Lothian]

> 
> > and in the end you see that all they did was just to copy
> > Java, and make it incompatible to Java.
> 
> Recently a Mono developer tried to convince the ARCH mailing
> list that Microsoft has actually included some significant 
> innovations in their stuff.  Would you be able to (without
> spending much time on it) check his claims for accuracy, and
> whether they're really relevant?


I'm a Java developer, but even I have to say this is accurate. It is
important to distinguish between C#, .NET and the CLR, though. C# is pretty
close to Java with a few enchancements - like properties & enumarations, and
a few steps backwards - like its exception handling. It also has operator
overloading. Have a read of
http://genamics.com/developer/csharp_comparative.htm for a fairly reasonable
comparison.

However, the CLR/.NET does have a few significant enhancements. A couple of
examples:

The Java platform has no equivalent to unmanaged code, and there are some
specialised cases where this is useful.

.NET (or more accuratly, the CLR) has good versioning control on an object
by object basis which allows multiple versions of the same code to co-exist
(you can partially emulate this in Java/JVM by using custom classloaders,
but it is kind of clunky)

On the other hand, Java/JVMs are mature technology. The performance of the
latest Hotspot VMs is pretty impressive, and I would imagine it will take a
couple of releases for MS to catch up with that, although the general design
of the CLR may make high performance easier (it was never designed for an
interpreted environment like the JVM was).

But in the end, it doesn't really matter. Both will be for used a long time.
After all, Python is undeniably better than Perl, and yet people still use
Perl ;)

Nick