C# From a Java Developer's Perspective

Microsoft's C# has raised eyebrows, interest and debate since its official announcement last year. The prolific Carnage4Life (Dare Obasanjo) has completed a detailed comparison of C# and Java, outlining the things that are identical, similar, nearly the same, or completely different between the two languages. If you're considering learning or applying either one, you might benefit by reading this paper first. There are some other excellent comparisons to be found linked from the Open Directory Project as well. Update: 11/20 03:35 GMT by T : Note: here's a mirror; interested readers who mirror the mirror get good seats in heaven.

Comments

Some more information

[nll8802]

There is a good, clean quick overview of C# here. The also do some comparison of C# to Java.

Java != Sun

[RichiP]

Although Sun engineers are handling the boards, the direction of Java is mostly influenced by the general public through the Java Community Process (See http://www.jcp.org/). Sun simply acts as an arbiter and caretaker.

If there are any good ideas in C#, there's really no reason it couldn't be adopted by Java. Someone just has to submit a request

Interesting, but there's an error...

[ncc74656]

From the linked article:

In languages like C and C++, each subarray of a multidimensional array must have the same dimensions.

I'm fairly sure you could do something like this in C or C++:

int** foo=(int**)malloc(sizeof(int*)*2);
int* foo[0]=(int*)malloc(sizeof(int)*3);
int* foo[1]=(int*)malloc(sizeof(int)*9);

That will set up a jagged array with the same dimensions as in the given C#/Java example. It will be addressable in the same manner. It won't have the bounds checking, but I suspect that the comment regarding Real Programmers and strong typing could be extended to bounds checking. :-)

Re:Interesting, but there's an error...

[Fjord]

This isn't right. C can do truely multidimensional arrays. If you say char[30][20] x it does one allocation of 600 contiguous bytes. When you use the array like x[10][10] it computes the full offset as in Pascal and BASIC, and then does a single pointer add. Here is an ok page that talks about C multidimensioned arrays.

But Java and C# don't actually let you have jagged multidimentional arrays like this. They have like you said in your first post, an array of pointers, which is valid in C. One wonders what the writer of the article thinks argv is (typed char*argv[])

Re:Interesting, but there's an error...

[man_ls]

Multidimensional arrays in Pascal are childishly easy, even in insanely large numbers of dimensions.

type xarray=packed array[0..20,0..20] of integer;
var data:xarray;

That's a multidimensional array for you, with a data type so you can pass it to a function.

If you'd wanted, but didn't feel like passing it to functions (i.e. no data type so it couldn't pass correctly) you could write

var data:packed array[0..20,0..20] of integer;

and accomplish the same thing. Either is accessible with a somple

data[x,y] structure, that can be controlled by FOR/WHILE loops, IF statements, and the like. Last year, I was working in truely 3-dimensional arrays in PASCAL to store data for an airline seating chart.

type xarray=packed array[0..20,0..20,0..20] of integer;
var data:xarray;

data[x,y,z]

And even 4+ dimensional arrays "worked" but I'll be damned if I could visualize them in any coherant way.

type xarray=packed array[0..20,0..20,0..20,0..20] of integer;

It may have been a fluke that it worked at all, but I did a relatively simple program to fill up each space with random data and writeLn() it out, just to see if it worked. For that big of a data structure, you could probably do much better using records, or seperate linked arrays if Pascal can do such a thing.

I've never done any programming work in BASIC so I can't speak for it's handlig of multidimensional arrays. I don't recall them being too hard from a program I looked at though, something to the effect of

DIM variable%type% AS array (x,y) or something.

w00t? no dynamic class loading?

[mnf999]

I did not know that (and couldn't read the full description as the site is totally /.ed :(

I design JBoss, the leading J2EE server and at THE HEART of it is the capicity to dynamically deploy new applications on our application server. I mean that is what application servers are ALL ABOUT.

in fact (plug) in JBoss we go the extra mile and allow you to hot-deploy (dynamically add classes) the server classes themselves, which neither IBM nor BEA, nor Oracle do.

So I was curious to know who would win the .net webservices race but it is extremelly clear in my mind, J2EE frameworks will deliver with webservices easier than any C# framework will

Why? well imagine that ANY time you change your class in C# YOU NEED TO REBOOT THE APPLICATION SERVER, yes, boys and girls that is the simple thing that "dynamic class loading" affords you, without it, the VM is tied to whatever you have at startup.

GEEEEZZZ!

Having used .NET

[f00zbll]

I haven't used C#, but I am using .NET on a project. From my experience so far, the .NET platform has a long way to go. It's good that C# will make things easier for developers, but like all languages with wide adoption, bloat will inevitably occur.

The first release of .NET will still be 2-3 releases from full fault tolerance and enterprise level computing. There are alot of complicated processes in enterprise computing and Microsoft's .NET platform as it stands today is far from meeting those needs. Microsoft has yet to define really useful modules and standards for complex processes that span multiple systems which include legacy VMS systems and modern solaris 8 applications.

SOAP is great for simple processes, but it is far from adaquate to handle distributed and transactional processes. Using standards like UDDI is a great step towards easing multi-platform integration. Instead of having different divisions of the same company design different API for publishing resources, it will be easier to have a common way of doing those things. It is not uncommon for financial institutions to store information differently. Take a simple think like address. Some places may store the number in a separate field, while others may replace "jr" with "junior". Anyone who has worked with large mixed environments knows this fact. SOAP is a message centric way of doing things. It is not designed for complex processes. The stuff IBM is building around SOAP is more complete than Microsoft's offering, but then again IBM has been at services longer.

Re:So how exactly...

[ergo98]

Well given that Beta 2 has been available for closing on a year now, and I've had RC1 on my machine for about a month now... That's how I use C#.

Slashdotted!

[hugg]

For those who feel like they're downloading the page over a 110-baud modem with an acoustic coupler located in the same room as a Disaster Area concert, here are some other similar comparisons.

Alternate Site For Article...

[Carnage4Life]

Get it here

PS: Mirrors encouraged, so if you manage to grab it and can host it at a site with beefier bandwidth, go ahead.

another mirror

[Lord Omlette]

here.

It'll be off the front page tomorrow, so all these mirrors shouldn't be needed...