J2EE vs. .NET in Productivity Comparison?

Matt Hughes asks: "When does one programmer's preferences (Java over Microsoft-anything because they hate Microsoft, or Microsoft over open-source because open-source is evil) and the variety of choices start to erode productivity? As a J2EE developer for the past few years, I admit that I've become frustrated at the number of choices out there. Every one offers a different way of doing things but they don't all interoperate (JBuilder doesn't natively understand Struts) and none of them -- in my experience -- pulls all of the web technologies together very succinctly. Does Visual Studio .NET and the .NET framework pull this together better than the open-source projects out there, or is it just as complicated in your experience? Is .NET too immature to be trusted? What are your thoughts?" For those interested in the raw performance numbers, Slashdot did a performance comparison between the two technologies, in an earlier article.

"I've recently been asked to produce a report listing the pros and cons of J2EE and .NET as a web application development platform. I've been using J2EE for years now and haven't even touched .Net as I dislike most Microsoft products. However, for the report, I am trying to be objective. From my own experience and from what I've read, it seems the defining issue for some people is choice.

As far as language preference, some argue Microsoft allows too much (VB.NET, C#, and supposedly everything else *eventually*) and J2EE too little (Java). As far as development environments, Microsoft offers too little (Visual Studio .Net, Windows Server 2003, Windows only) and J2EE provides too much (JBuilder, Eclipse, Tomcat, JBoss, Websphere, any OS/hardware combo, etc)."

Comments

Looking for Trolls?

[ClosedSource]

Believe it or not some people use Java for reasons other than hating MS. Some people use MS for reasons other than disliking open source.

Having said that, I do note that you are perpetuating the myth that Java runs on "any OS/hardware combo". This is untrue of any language but I suspect "C" comes closer to achieving it than Java.

Re:Looking for Trolls?

[scrytch]

Having said that, I do note that you are perpetuating the myth that Java runs on "any OS/hardware combo". This is untrue of any language but I suspect "C" comes closer to achieving it than Java.

I suspect you'll have a hard time running compiled C on any platform for which there is a compiler. Or for that matter, even build it unmodified without the benefit of autoconf unless it's among the most trivial of programs.

Not that Java has a lock on portability -- Perl and Python do just fine in that area too.

Maslow Hammer

[Khazunga]

I think everyone suffers from the Maslow Hammer syndrome. We all prefer to use the tools we already know. This is not an entirely wrong attitude, since anyone is more proficient with the tools used regularly. The Maslow Hammer syndrome is dangerous only when its threshold is so high it prevents changing to a tool that is much better. This is not the case for either of J2EE/.NET. If I changed to .NET now, I'd take a few months to develop as fast as I do now in Java.

.NET vs Java

[Per Wigren]

I haven't coded neither Java or C# much, but I know the basics for both of them. C# to me seems a bit clearer and easier to get a hang on than Java. I also like the fact that I can code in C#, Smalltalk, Eiffel, ilasm (yeah right;)) or some other language, and if a Visual Basic programmer want to use my classes (s)he can just use them, like they were native classes.. No modifications needed. No wrappers needed.
I haven't done any testing on raw performance, but I have noticed that running "mono app.exe" starts the app almost as fast as a native app while Java takes WAY more time to start up.. Also, Java seems to have much more RAM overhead..

Re:.NET vs Java

[UPi]

Please note that the question wasn't C# vs Java, but .NET vs J2EE. The languages themselves are just plain irrelevant in this case. Also note that .NET is not just C#, but a whole bunch of CLI'ed languages (there's even a bastardization of C++ there).

I have used both J2EE and .NET, and there are a few things I can offer for the report.

• J2EE is more mature. It's been around longer, so it simply had a longer time to grow out of childhood sicknesses. For example: The documentation is more complete. .NET's docs are like all Microsoft docs: mostly generated, and sometimes the very reason you're reading them is missing. For example sometimes you don't have a clue what exceptions a library method can throw...
  
• .NET is pretty handy for what it was concieved: creating simple web-based DB frontends. If you want an object model behind it, with good persistency options, you will want to choose J2EE instead with it's Enterprise Java Beans.
  
  This is quite general for everything: e.g. .NET has the almighty DataSet, J2EE has persistent beans. DataSets are simple, but go back to the structured programming age. The beans are more sophisticated, but take a little longer to get the hang of.
  
• Learning curve: IMHO J2EE takes a little longer to comprehend. Once you got the hang of them, though, both environments are easy to use.
• Oh and one more thing: C# doesn't check the exceptions. I may be a purist, but I just detest that. You have to document, maintain, and generally keep an eye out for your and the system's exceptions all the time (of course sometimes you have no idea what system exceptions there are..)
  

Summary: If you want a quick and dirty DB frontend, go for .NET (with C# or VB). If you want something more complex, I'd recommend J2EE.

Re:.NET vs Java

[Khazunga]

I also like the fact that I can code in C#, Smalltalk, Eiffel, ilasm (yeah right;)) or some other language, and if a Visual Basic programmer want to use my classes (s)he can just use them, like they were native classes.. No modifications needed. No wrappers needed.

The multi-language aspect of .NET, much hyped by MS-marketing, is a common characteristic to all bytecode-interpreted languages. Java has its own list of bytecode compilers: 165 of them, by current counts.

They both work well

[cookd]

I think letting "I hate Microsoft" or "I hate open source" sway your decision is unprofessional (besides -- do people really hate open source? I don't even think Bill Gates *hates* open source, he just wants to keep his market share). Rant and rave one way or the other on Slashdot all you want, but make your business decisions based on facts. There are plenty of pros and cons on both sides.

Variety can definitely erode productivity. At work, I have to keep up on the Win32 API, the Windows CE API, C++ (with ATL, MFC, and STL), C#, Perl, 2 variants of SQL, makefiles, with some VBScript and JavaScript thrown in for good measure. At home, I try to keep up with the FreeBSD API, 2 more variants of SQL, PHP, Java, a different structure for makefiles, etc. And the alphabet soup doesn't seem to be getting any better.

Open source seems to have a tendency to have several projects around a given problem (MySQL, PostgreSQL, FireBird, SAP databases), while businesses tend to lead to bigger, more fully featured (also called bloated -- depends on your point of view) products (SQL Server, Oracle, DB2). Performance varies by application -- for jobs that don't need the extra features, sometimes the simpler products are better. And sometimes, open source results in a real beast (Mozilla). Java is somewhere in between I guess. But since the question was more about Java vs. .Net than open source in general, I'll get to the point.

I haven't used Java much for web apps, but I have done some general development in Java. I have done some web development with .Net (C# in particular), and a lot of general development. From this limited perspective, here are my observations:

The performance benchmark you linked to was pretty meaningless. It seems to have been funded by Microsoft, so that just might have biased the methodology a bit. Nevertheless, I think there are some general gut feelings that I think are reasonably accurate regarding the performance of Java and .Net. Both have roughly similar execution speeds (both have decent JIT engines under the hood). Most performance differences in benchmarks will probably be found to be due to the quality of the benchmark code or the quality of the libraries (such as database drivers) being used. I know that Microsoft has gone to great lengths to optimize their database drivers, and a while ago some benchmarks were posted that showed some significant advantages to their drivers. Perhaps Java has caught up since then -- I don't know.

As far as IDEs go, I'm not sure why "choice" in this matter is really an advantage. .Net only has one decent IDE, and some people don't like it, but it gets the job done well. There are side utilities that fill in any gaps left. I don't have as much experience with Java IDEs, but I'm sure they are also decent, but that there is no one single IDE that makes everybody happy. Since most workshops have to pick one IDE for the team to agree on, somebody is going to be unhappy no matter what, just like some people might be unhappy with the Visual Studio IDE.

As far as language goes, I guess it is nice that .Net supports multiple languages, but I suspect that most workshops will only make heavy use of one or maybe two. It just gets too complicated otherwise. The nice thing is that no matter what language you pick, you can access the same support libraries. But the more important question is which language is better for your purpose -- Java or [whichever language you decide to use].

I personally like C# over Java. Things like ref and out parameters, boxing, and attributes are things that are quite simply missing from Java. They are needed, and they aren't there. Obviously Microsoft took a lot of good ideas from Java, but since they got to start over with it, they got to improve on the parts of Java that drove Java programmers nutty.

On the other hand, .Net hasn't been around as long. And whi

J2EE becoming the de-facto standard...

[HawkingMattress]

Several times recently we have had opportunities to have contracts with public shops, like governemental agencies and the like.
They all sent us loads of papers describing what type of architecture they expected, and what rules we'd have to follow. What they all want to ear is : open standards, evolutivity, free (as in beer) libraries, maximum portability, and connectivity.

Now, guess what they like to hear between J2EE, jakarta libs, JNDI, linux, or... .NET, microsoft, sqlserver, licencing ??
It seems big shops really start to get the point about the advantages of open standards.

(Note : I'm talking about french agencies, it might not be true everywhere. But I suspect most european countries are following those lines too.)

J2EE (JSP) vs ASP.NET

[Gaijin42]

Okay, here is my anti-disclaimer. I _AM_ a web developer, and I do web development all day long, every day, since there was a web pretty much.

When JSP first came out, it was a significant step forward from the tool that I was using at the time, ASP (classic). The advantages were many. Exception handling, and objects were the primary ones. Other things (like being strongly typed) also were a significant step forward. Yes you could get many of these things by doing your ASP development in JScript, instead of VBScript, but nobody really did.

However, the disadvantage of Java : over-architected. If you follow the blueprints, or examples provided by Sun, or Apache, or any other big shop out there, you end up with thousands of classes. Java itself doesnt have this issue, (IE, the language does not require this) its more of the paradigm that the whole J2EE world evokes.

ASP.Net has many of the same advantages that JSP has. Exceptions, classes, strong types (if you want them)

However, as a bonus, the .Net model encourages a better web architecture (IMO).

For example, take a look at Java Pet Store vs PetShop.net. Yes there are complaints from the Java world that its not a fair comparison, because they did things differently. THATS THE POINT. If Java encourages you to do things in a way that uses 4x the code, and runs slower, thats a problem. Microsoft is under no obligation to do things in an inneficient manner to match Java, because thats what Sun wants. MS set out to compare "how much code to make this functionality happen, and how does it perform"

Some may say : but the Java code might be better architected! How do you judge architecture? Only 2 things matter. Maintainability, and Performance. The .Net solution performs better. So thats 1. The Java code might be more "correct" OOP design, but in terms of maintainablilty, mediocre code, vs 4X perfect code is gonna be a close call. And I don't think the .Net code is mediocre, its very readable. And the Java code isn't perfect. So in my book, .Net wins the pet store competition.b

Now, from a platform perspective, Java did some things that I wish would have made it into .Net (specifically C#). .Net has a problem of swallowing exceptions. In Java you have to declare what any function can throw. Therefore the caller of your function can know to handle the error, pass the error, or ignore (swallow) the error.

Since you dont declare exceptions in C#, callers of functions have to be prepared to handle any exception. As a result, most callers just end up catching Exception and then they never get passed up.

Some other things are enviromental. Visual Studio.net is FAR AND AWAY the best IDE I have ever used. Seamless integration of HTML, code, Javascript, database etc. Integrated debugging of client and server side code, including database calls (it will jump into the stored procs and let you step through them!)

While integrated debugging is something available in Java, I have not seen it to this degree.

Also, ASP.net seems much easier to extend. Making new controls (user controls or server controls) is trivial compared to the work required in Java.

Now, Java's big claim to fame is of course cross platform compatibility. If you need to run on Unix TODAY, then obviously go with Java (or python, or perl or whatever)

But Mono is just around the corner. Mono will already run iBuySpy (a pretty complex app) without modifications. So cross platform for .Net is a reality too.

Re:J2EE (JSP) vs ASP.NET

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

However, the disadvantage of Java : over-architected. If you follow the blueprints, or examples provided by Sun, or Apache, or any other big shop out there, you end up with thousands of classes. Java itself doesnt have this issue, (IE, the language does not require this) its more of the paradigm that the whole J2EE world evokes.

This is just plain incorrect. J2EE is not over-architected. Have Sun and the various Java vendors done a really crappy job of providing "How do I get from A to B" info? Yep, but it's not over architected. In fact, the core J2EE libraries don't have much in there that isn't necessary.

The thousands of classes are necessary when you want to deploy portable, clusterable, scalable components. The trick is, how to not write all that by hand. I personally haven't written any of those classes by hand, or maintained the XML descriptor files needed in over a year. I use XDoclet to manage that. It's portable between IDE's and supports almost all the containers available. If you're application is portable between IDE's (in other words, you used Ant to build it and didn't use weird wizard things that store meta-data in the IDE somewhere), then incorporating tools like XDoclet shouldn't be an issue.

I write one class for an EJB, I add XDoclet tags that generate it's Local and Remote interfaces, Utility objects, Value Objects, XML descriptors and SOAP descriptors. All in one file, so where's the bloat?

The XDoclet paradigm is going completely mainstream in Java 1.5. You can go look at it on the JCP as JSR-175.

For example, take a look at Java Pet Store vs PetShop.net. Yes there are complaints from the Java world that its not a fair comparison, because they did things differently. THATS THE POINT. If Java encourages you to do things in a way that uses 4x the code, and runs slower, thats a problem. Microsoft is under no obligation to do things in an inneficient manner to match Java, because thats what Sun wants. MS set out to compare "how much code to make this functionality happen, and how does it perform"

Some may say : but the Java code might be better architected! How do you judge architecture? Only 2 things matter. Maintainability, and Performance. The .Net solution performs better. So thats 1. The Java code might be more "correct" OOP design, but in terms of maintainablilty, mediocre code, vs 4X perfect code is gonna be a close call. And I don't think the .Net code is mediocre, its very readable. And the Java code isn't perfect. So in my book, .Net wins the pet store competition.b

The Petstore comparison doesn't hold any water anywhere. If you are designing webapps the way the Petstore projects were built, you need to find another profession. The original Sun Petstore was built as an example of how to get basic stuff working, not a working example of how to build enterprise apps. It was used as part of a short tutorial where they wanted to demonstrate every J2EE technology in one bang.

The Microsoft .Net Petstore was a cheap shot at Sun. Rickard Oberg, who started the JBoss project and the XDoclet project has written extensively on why both are crap and Microsoft was pulling a fast one. Frankly, I haven't looked at the Sun Petstore stuff in several years, because it's useless for doing real work.

Sun has a long history of great technology, but they couldn't market themselves to save their life. Seriously, how many people know what the hell, the benefit of SunONE is? Sun's software strategy appears to be a world of contridictions.

If you want to do J2EE, don't ask Sun how to do it. Go to the Open Source Java community. These are the guys that are innovating. They see the holes that Sun has left and have gone and plugged them.

If you really wanted, you could write your next webapp in the same way Microsoft wrote their Petstore, load the entire database into memory, t

Objective .NET/C# vs J2EE/Java Comparison

[massive-cow]

I have used both a fair amount. My previous job was writing Java business web applications, and I am currently managing the development of a C# webservice (for the server) and a C# winforms client.

Let's start with the picture from 10,000 feet: C# is aimed squarely at Java, and for all intents and purposes, it is a superset of Java. Similarly for .NET and J2EE, though they are less similar than the language comparison.

Language Differences:

C# has less integrated threading support. (which is a bad thing, imho)

C#'s XML and SOAP integration make it /ideal/ for any application dealing heavily with either protocol. In fact, I would say that it is nothing short of brilliant.

Java's XML integration is a nightmare. JAXB is the only thing that comes close to being halfway decent, and it still doesn't come close to the integration C#. XML serialisation in C# is fast and beautiful.

C# gives you far more control over the dynamic reloading of classes, as well as increased security through what .NET calls 'AppDomains'. This is a very powerful feature.

C# documentation isn't quite as nice or refined as the standard javadoc fare, but MSDN is a pretty nice source, though sometimes you have to look a little harder or deeper than you would with the javadocs.

In general, both APIs are very clean.

As for maturity, I don't really think that's an argument. Most of the Java technologies available now (especially the XML/web services bits, in which the competetition is most fierce) are no older than .NET/C#.

I think the larger question is the underlying /platform/ maturity, but I will leave the zealots to argue Windows vs Unix.

Do you feel comfortable locked into a Microsoft platform and x86 hardware? Personally, for a server, I don't. Go help out Mono, which is progressing nicely, but could definitely use some more help. (http://go-mono.org)

If you do, I would definitely go with .NET and C#. When Mono gets further along for web services, it will certainly be a force to reckoned with. As for writing webservice and database clients for Win32, it is really quite nice. You could use GTK# and have it cross-platform, yet still take advantage of features that C# includes.

In short, the pros: excellent XML and SOAP handling, speed, many small features which are currently emulated at the API level in other languages ...and the cons: currently somewhat locked into MS' platform (though this should change shortly with Mono), somewhat inferior auto-documenting to javadoc.