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Has a Decade of .NET Delivered On Microsoft's Promises?
cyclocommuter writes with this snippet from The Register's assessment of whether
Microsoft's .NET framework has been a success: "If the goal of .NET was to see off Java, it was at least partially successful. Java did not die, but enterprise Java became mired in complexity, making .NET an easy sell as a more productive alternative. C# has steadily grown in popularity, and is now the first choice for most Windows development. ASP.NET has been a popular business web framework. The common language runtime has proved robust and flexible. ... Job trend figures here show steadily increasing demand for C#, which is now mentioned in around 32 per cent of UK IT programming vacancies, ahead of Java at 26 per cent."
The article says that demand for c# is around 32%, but it should also add in the demand for vb.net, which is less but should be added to the total, as it is in use. In my view, the language features, excellent development environment and comprehensive libraries make .NET a win for most LOB applications - which is the vast majority of all PC applications in use at the moment.
I think that java had the momentum, and the quality, so ultimately there was something structurally wrong with it that caused the decline in marketshare. The webapp share was taken over by flash, which is far slower than the java vm, because actionscript was easier to program in. If sun had made a ligthweight version of the vm for the browser and simpler language like visual basic, things might have been very different.
Microsoft has a monopoly. Maybe less so than before on the "desktop" category, but to state the obvious their monopoly on "Windows" is 100%. So naturally, they have every advantage when creating products for their own platform, and they'll do everything legally possible to shove dev products down developers throats.
So I say whether they call it .Net or .Piss, it does not matter much. The success of ASP is a bi-product of their desktop advantage. If ASP.NET were sold by ASPsoft, then no one would buy it.
Business 101: How do you sell a product regardless of its quality?
Microsoft is great at this, as every other major US corporation is and should be.
BTW I am not saying anything about their quality. I am just saying it doesn't really matter much, because their software is sold by weight.
.NET is not limited to C#, although that is probably the most usual. Any language can be used so long as it is made to conform to the .NET CLR (Computer Language Runtime (?)) standard. In addition to the usual MS suspects, there are Third Party implementations of other languages that fit within that framework. This gives .NET development a flexibility that encourages development from experts in many domains dominated by other languages.
Has it delivered? If it continues to exist, yes.
Is it the best? Depends on your prejudices. Few have the ability to make a truly objective assessment. Objective.
Keep Doing Good.
People like .Net because MS offers tools to allow point & click programming. This means more people can do it and companies can lower wages.
That is one big reason not to support it. We don't need more shitty software that people don't understand how they've created it.
I had once to port a system of half a million locs of java code, between windows, linux and RS6000, I had to change one line of code for the RS6000 due to a bug in IBMs VM, and that was on Java 4...
I think .NET is a good compromise (meaning that it is not the best but it is often good enough) on:
.NET (up to a complete OS) maybe the framework would have become more mature and more adopted.
- learning curve (easy by design)
- functionalities (reflection, anonymous methods, attributes...)
- portability to different "Windows" (Mobile, Server...) and to other OS' (Mono)
- execution speed
I also agree that if Microsoft had distributed more software written in
Working to work less.
I got the feeling Microsoft looked at Java and said, "Gee, people really like things that are multi-something, instead of multi-platform, let's do multi-language." Thus the CLI was born, but everyone just uses C# with .NET anyhow.
Except the difference is that .Net derives most of its appeal from its tight integration with Windows. You try and port it and the OS simply doesn't have the supporting utilities you've built it to work with.
Java on the other hand is self-contained. So while you do have to do porting, Java code, in practice, doesn't make as many assumptions about the environment it's running in.
You're comparing odd bugs in Java implementations to .NET's inherent (and intended) tight coupling with Windows platform. Qualitatively different.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Where I live, on Dice.com there are 74 open ASP.NET, and 17 open PHP jobs.
You are totally talking out of your ass. I really hope you understand the irony of starting with, "please dont bullcrap if you are not in industry".
I may not be in the dumb, arrogant PHP developer industry, but I can assure you that I am in the industry. There is a good chance that if you haven't used a website that I helped develop, you have at least used one that my company has. Where I work, we use ASP.NET (Primarily .NET) and Java, but not PHP.
But hey, don't let that discourage you the next time you want to post an uninformed and totally inaccurate rant about PHP and how you are in the industry but nobody else is...
The joke I've heard about Java is "Write once, debug everywhere." I've certainly encountered trouble with it in terms of doing system support. Sometimes you find Java software that needs a specific version of the JVM to run. Newer won't do it, only that one works. This isn't because it is a custom version, it is because the JVM they used when writing it did things one way, and that changed and broke it later and they haven't wanted to update. Now you can argue that they should rewrite their code to support the new stuff, but you can also argue they shouldn't have to.
This isn't to say Java is useless cross platform, but I do get tired of hearing the crap of "Oh just write it in Java, it'll run everywhere!" No, actually, it very well may not.
ASP.NET is as good as any Java web framework
ASP.NET is an abomination unto good Web-Development practices. .NET is a wonderful framework for developing applications that are run on a local machine, but it needs to stay the hell of my internet.
I am not convinced that it is such a bad thing that Java-the-language is 'stagnated'. As language, Java was designed from the start to eliminate features that were, in the parlance of the day, "Considered Harmful". So yes, it was and is a bit restrictive. C# has a richer syntax, including "goto"... The richer syntax can be a plus because it often saves time in coding.
But creating code is what, 20% of the lifetime cost of a software package? And meanwhile C# provides the less disciplined programmer with plenty of opportunities to create write-only code. Never mind lambdas and closures --- I am not so sure that having properties in C# is a great idea, because their very purpose is to hide that code invocation happens. And I positively dislike the opt-out from declaring which exceptions a method throws. Exception handling is simply too important.
> I'm on the verge of abandoning Java for my projects. Currently, there's just almost no business reason to use it.
Yes. Nevermind the target server platforms. Those don't matter at all...
Like I said: .NET is a Windows centric solution meant to keep the Windows users fixated on Windows and not distracted by anyone else.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
A few things:
First, ASP.NET isn't a programming language, it's a library. A lot of people write websites in C# using ASP.NET libraries.
Secondly, you have to add the numbers up.
So, using your values, we get:
US-Wide search results:
dotNET: 8266
Java: 5000
Last 7 days:
dotNET: 2590
Java: 1608
NYC, last 60 days:
dotNET: 553
Java: 591
In other words, your conclusion is disingenuous. Job postings asking for ".NET experience" typically mean C# even though they don't explicitly say that. They very rarely mean VB.NET or any of the other languages supported by the .NET VM. Same goes for ASP.NET (which, as I said above, is just a library).
While it does appear that Java is currently slightly higher in demand in NYC than .NET, that doesn't jive with the rest of the US overall.
Although Java-the-language has stagnated a bit (I don't know if JDK 7 will ever be complete, due to all the feature cramming), but there's been a lot of activity during the past few years on other languages that run on Java-the-platform. Groovy and Rhino (Javascript) have been available for the JVM for quite a while. JRuby is actually faster than "native" Ruby for a lot of real-world applications. The Lisp-like Clojure language has a lot of fans. IMO, Scala is the most interesting out of all of these, with a very sophisticated type system, as well as functional features that the cool OCaml and Haskell kids seem to love.
All of these alternate languages can use the wealth of libraries available for Java, generally on all platforms on which the JVM runs. For example, I know of Scala apps that can run on Andriod, which is close enough to Sun's VM.
lol, this whole thread is overrun by Microsoft astroturfers.
Slashdot should start posting hostnames with each post.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Yup, you nailed it.
Computer languages exist to make tools get stuff done, not as temples dedicated to the genius of the individual programmer whose main talent is mental masturbation through obfuscation. .Net has made my job remarkably easier even though programming isn't my primary job. I can cobble up some rather remarkable tools to do what I need more quickly and easily than I could in either Java, C or C++.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Others have correctly pointed out that rentacoder is not "the industry", nor does it represent enterprise-level development. Having said that, they take refuge in the popularity of ASP .NET vs PHP, with many declarations about the superiority of MS in the enterprise. The argument of one vs. the other is sadly lacking in specificity on either side -- perhaps because EITHER can be used to achieve the same result. Upside potential and risk are pretty much the same.
Among the benefits of LAMP are vastly simplified licensing. When you use LAMP, the BSA never calls. And you don't get pesky little offers from MS partners to do "SAM" audits. Even if you have no license problem, who needs the BS? System uptime is another benefit. I have worked long enough with both to see a big difference.
To me, the benefit of ASP .NET is the commoditization of developers. I think it is easier to treat people interchangeably in a world where the architectural choices are narrow. Some enterprises live in perpetual "risk management" mode, one of the chief risks being sudden departure of key employees. If there is one place where the MS platform shines, this is it. The next geek can be inserted almost as readily a replacing a USB mouse.
Garbage code is abundant on both platforms. In the world of LAMP, there is the lower echelon of rentacoder where people try to cobble together systems for pocket change. The amazing part is not that it works well, but that it works at all. In the enterprise world, I have seen dreadful apps that are forced upon a captive population of corporate employees. For reasons that have nothing to do with technology, the management strategies that highlight the advantages of ASP often include the side effect of rigid time and cost constraints. When the money runs out, development stops. Some (but not all) of these enterprises would be far better off with an army of LAMP rentacoders.
It takes real money to develop systems. If you have lots of it, a reasonably competent project mgr. can spend his/her way to success. But if you don't, the cost of ASP (including entire Windows environment) is money that could be redirected to man hours of developer time.
The real enemy of LAMP and ASP is not Java, it is Flash. Foolish people are easily swayed by cute graphics -- even when eye candy is not helping. I am surprised the PHB in Dilbert has not converted the entire software development team to Flash. I'll check again this Sunday.
You're missing a few things:
1) It's impossible to make all development easy, but you can make some parts/kinds of it easier.
That is to say, just because a language like VB.Net makes throwing together a passable UI fast/easy doesn't automatically mean that all VB.Net tasks are easy or that someone who's qualified to slap a DataSet on a web page is qualified to do something more complicated.
2) They're really not competing with free (as in beer) in the sense that you seem to be saying that they are.
I can get something like OpenOffice as a free (as in costing no money) word processor to use at my business; I can't get someone for free to write an app that solves the specific needs of my business processes. I'm going to end up paying a team of developers for that, and whether they're using Java or PHP or C#, the cost to me is still pretty similar.