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Microsoft to Take on Java Again With J#

Posted by timothy on from the honing-or-phoney dept.

CptnKirk writes: "Many people liked Visual J++ as an IDE. The settlement with Sun, following it's Java suit, pretty much stopped this development. Apparently Microsoft is back at it again, with another attempt to bring Java development back to the Windows platform. J# (Jay Sharp), will be part of Visual Studio .Net, and provides "an implementation of the Sun Java spec". It however has IMHO some very severe limitations. It's not actually Java(TM) compliant, doesn't product bytecode, or read Java raw bytecode, or run in a VM. It also doesn't support Java runtime features past 1.1.4. The InfoWorld article is here. As a Java developer, to me creating a product that is supposed to be some sort of Java tool that doesn't support any of Java's useful features or even latest language spec, doesn't cut mustard. I liked VJ++, it was a solid IDE and if it supported JDK 1.4 I'd be all for it. I wish Microsoft would just produce a good IDE, and not screw with the language."

2 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Download by VA+Software · · Score: 2, Informative

    Microsoft's download is http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualj/jsharp/beta.asp.

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  2. Re:This makes sense to me by flipper28 · · Score: 2, Informative

    forget about C#, Java, VB, C++, etc - these are just the "tools" - I written code in assember, c, c++, java, perl, vb, basic, etc for years - too many people worry about the language and not the solution.

    We need to look at microsoft differently - we see them as "Windows" when in fact they're more than that - Microsoft makes most of it's money from applications like office, exchange, sql, vc++, vb, vstudio et al. Microsoft needs to move away from the OS to grow (home appliance, large systems, etc) - windows is the common platform, just the way ".NET" will be the platform beyond windows.

    Think of it this way, if microsoft can abstract it's applications to "virtual" platform, it can then start moving across platforms - very different from Sun's java. The JVM method is cool, but application based - ".NET" is a platform, whether it's on windows or not. As much as I disagree with microsoft's policies, they do understand application (not os)development more than most others. With .NET micorosft could target solaris, linux, mac, x-box, mobile devices with the same code base, the same wide application support. COM will die, Java will run in .NET with .NET wrappers to the .NET platform os, Linux will be a great server OS but have limited desktop support.

    Does this make sense?