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Microsoft would be absolutely insane to even think about dropping .NET

Just like they'd be crazy to break backwards compatibility with VB?

What, pray tell, is encumbering about C#? It's almost exactly like Java.

I don't get it. Why does nobody understand this?

Java is a language, and a runtime, and an API.

The standardized portions of .NET are the language and the runtime.

Notice the critical missing piece?

What do you think happens when you want to leave MS?

I can just picture the post now. "Hey ECMA said it's a standard but strangely when I tried to leave MS I got all these errors about missing classes? I don't understand."

You didn't write an app to add numbers forever without doing input or output. You wrote an actual app that uses the API. And now you can't leave. You are locked in.

What do you think MS does when they've got you locked in? What they always do. What any vendor that gets you locked in does. They bend you over a barrel.

You will be stuck watching Java people migrate from machine to machine, OS to OS, VM to VM, App Server to App Server... taking advantage of actual marketplaces full of innovation and competition... while you stagnate in MS's walled garden.

What numbers are you looking at? In Dallas at least, there is extremely high demand for C#/.NET developers.

I never refuse to provide sources, but I can't believe you have the audacity to ask me this.

Have you even picked up a newspaper?

The picture is abundantly clear... I doubt it's even that different in Dallas (although it's possible I suppose)...

(Reference 1) (Reference 2)

Unsafe code is rarely used throughout the actual framework itself, but when it is, it's primary purpose is performance.

I've already produced references for others to prove Microsoft itself actively promotes the use of interop and unmanaged code.

Of course, people may recognize that it's a bad feature and not use it... Not exactly a badge of honor for .NET though.

I've already made my rather obvious point about why this is bad... now you have the same loss of guarantees and stability of native, with all the overhead of the VM... so this begs the question...

I suppose that they should have bit the bullet and used a slower method, so you could complain about performance instead? ...why use the VM?

the runtime can, theoretically, support any language

Theoretically has nothing to do with practicality; if you read me, I am speaking about performance. I have no doubt you can shoehorn a shitty implementation of anything you want onto CLR or the JVM for that matter...

Not surprisingly, people are more interested in optimizing C code.

So you apparently concede the point that CLR is not as flexible in terms of practical support for other languages that significantly different from C/C++/Java as its proponents sometimes claim...?

Which is unfortunate, I've had occasion to want to use Mono, and I'd love to run ASP.NET 2.0 code on a linux box (I still think Apache > IIS).

It comes down to pure, hardboiled obstinancy.

If Microsoft wanted to beat the crap out of Java all they'd need to do would be to put down the patent gun, open up their sources, and let .NET embrace cross platform. They could perhaps out-Java Java.

We both know very well they wont. It's because .NET is not designed to win the language wars or be the best language. It is designed to stop the bleeding from developers breaking out of MS's jail, by providing a new way of locking developers (and their code) into the proprietary Microsoft platform.

TIOBE Programming Community Index for December 2005
December Headline: Java and C# Nominees for "Programming Language of 2005" Award
 
The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TPC index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.
 
The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system.
 
Position Dec 2005, Position Dec 2004, Programming Language, Ratings Dec 2005, Delta Dec 2004
 
1 2 Java 22.129% +5.80%
2 1 C 19.632% +0.06%
3 3 C++ 11.026% -0.89%
4 4 PHP 9.629% -1.76%
5 5 (Visual) Basic 8.710% +0.54%

it doesn't need code recompilation nor does it need the developer to be aware of what the platform actually does beneath

which of course is why there are seven different distributions of azureus, each one OS-specific.

"php is dying", eh?

if anything, the long term graph shows it's java that is dying.

If you can get your head around Aqusition[sic], the ZODB and Product Deveopment[sic] then Zope is a super-fast development platform.

I recenty became the web administrator at a small university and the college I work for uses Zope. I knew a little Zope and Python beforehand and it helped me get the job. I was all hot and heavy to switch them to a PHP/MySQL solution, though my first love is Perl. Doing stuff in PHP was fast. As I studied Zope and Python more and more I came to realize that my initial impression was correct. It does have a steep learning curve (Zope not Python), but it is very powerful and reasonably fast. I'm not crazy about ZODB. I'll keep Zope put it behing Apache and connect to MySQL when I redesign the site. Also I'll throw Plone on top.

What does this have to do with Ruby and Rails? Not much. The user base of Plone/Zope/Python (8) is much smaller than the PHP (5)/MySQL crowd. The Ruby (23) on Rails is even smaller than the Plone crowd.

Here is the link http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index/tekst.htm

Java, Jan 2005 => 17.478%

Java, Mar 2005 => 18.871%

Of course it is becoming more popular, now that every dumbass can write his own open-in-the-back website to provide script kiddies a computer to play with.
You know I'm right, C language buffer overflows are in first position

C# has a lot of marketing dollars behind it but it just isn't getting used very much. Go look on any jobs site and compare the number of C# jobs vs. Java jobs. Or check tiobe to see how popular C# is on the web. Even Mono hasn't managed to make C# very popular on the open source front. Check out freshmeat and see how many projects are using C#. This lack of popularity can no longer be attributed to the newness of the language, it has been around for over 4 years now. I suspect MS will be coming out with something to replace it soon.

REXX is ranked #36 amongst programming languages! How is that strong? Further, other languages considered dead by many are ranked higher than REXX.

As Perl seems to fade more into irrelevence

Popularity of programming languages

Doesn't seem to be fading just yet... ;)

This Dutch company produces some interesting stats for those interested in the popularity trends of languages TIOBE Programming Community Index February 2004

On page 2 of interview:

"Perl, Python, Ruby and Tcl are the four dynamic programming languages that get the most publicity as open source projects, and I think they have a lot more in common than they differ."

Hello? Language Usage Estimates (based on Google searches).

Depending where you look, PHP gets far more publicity than Python, Ruby and Tcl put together, for example: Head-to-Head: PHP vs. ASP.NET.

Quit being some kind of language snob. PHP may not be the greatest language ever designed but it's highly popular and aside from web sites, does a reasonable job on the command line and is capable of simple desktop apps: PHP-GTK.

More to the point, alongside Apache, it's one of the main things holding off the Beast from domination of the Internet.

> java was created to be a write once, run anywhere
> solution. because of corporate politics and
> competition, it just doesn't pull it off.

Rather just re-iterating this myth, could you give some practical examples of where you have found the cross platform ability lacking?

> the VM distribution problem on windows machines
> of late

Hadn't you heard that Dell and HP are going to be putting Java on all windows machines soon? Or that the latest version on java in beta (1.4.2) can auto update itself?
Or that J2ME is by far and away the major platform for mobile phones will millions of VMs already in peoples hands?

> nice idea, solid effort on the technological end
> -but it's going the way of betamax and solaris.

Oh I don't know. Java still seems to be pretty popular according to scans of Google.

Check out the TIOBE Programming Community Index -- the current language frontrunner is Java, although the combination of C/C++ would be considered dominant.

Your 90% list is probably more like Java, C/C++, Perl and VB...

Java will not be disappearing any time soon. Too many big name companies (most notably IBM and Oracle) have invested too much money in Java for them to let that happen. Also, with the way that Java is developed, through the Java Community Process, any potential buyer would find it difficult to exert full control over the the technology. For a closed product, Java is pretty open.

IBM would be the most obvious candidate as Java and particularly open-source Java offerings (such as the Jikes compiler and Eclipse IDE) are a big part of their software activities. They develop their own IDEs and app-servers and ship JVMs for several platforms that have routinely out-performed Sun's equivalent offerings.

It would also be interesting to see how the SWT vs Swing issue would work out if IBM were to become Java's new guardians. Swing is the Sun graphics toolkit for Java and is the standard for client-side Java. It's fully platform independent and uses pluggable look-and-feels with lightweight components to emulate the look and feel of the native platform. SWT is IBM's alternative that is used in the Eclipse IDE. It's not quite so portable as it provides an abstraction on top of the native windowing system but it has advantages in terms of performance and closer integration with the underlying system. It breaks the write-once-run-anywhere philosophy but is growing in popularity.

Oracle could be another contender, they too use a lot of Java, particularly for their client-side tools (which it has to be said weren't very good last time I used them) and they partner with Sun on the database/hardware front.

Apple could be a dark horse, they have a vested interest in Java. In a world where the desktop is dominate by Microsoft, the availability of Java software is a good thing for them as it means there will always be software that runs on Macs. They have put a lot of effort into supporting Java in MacOS X and gone further than other operating systems to help Java applications fit in with the look and feel of the platform.

A lot of people don't realise just how much Java coding is going on out there, because most of it is hidden away on the server side. This site claims that Java is the world's most popular programming language by some distance (though you may argue about the accuracy of their method of measuring these things). I also read elsewhere (can't find a link) that there are more lines of Java being written these days than any other language.

(never mind that anyone who knows what + actually does there will tell you not to use it anyhow because it's slow...)

I have often wondered why Java programmers can't seem to indent their code properly. I've even had trouble finding a good program to (re-)indent Java code. The main reason why I'd like to see programmers stick to 80 columns (or 120 even? please??) is because sometimes I might want to PRINT SOMETHING OUT.

However I realize that when you have code that looks like

fooObject.barSomething( blahSomethingElse.stuffInstantiator(aVariable, bObject).toString()).bazMemberFunction()

it might be difficult to indent without introducing awkward spaces or unnecessary temporary variables, and you wouldn't want to disrupt the straightforward purity of the Java code itself!