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."

Comments

I think they made a small mistake.

[Burnhard]

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.

Re:I think they made a small mistake.

[Gnaget]

I hardly think we should include all the high school students using VB.NET in the count.

"mentioned"

[Anonymous Coward]

steadily increasing demand for C#, which is now mentioned in around 32 per cent of UK IT programming vacancies

Yup see them every day

"Please don't apply if you have C# experience"

Re:"mentioned"

[Anonymous Coward]

Awwwe, look at the poor starving troll. Will someone feed it?

Re:"mentioned"

[pjh3000]

You're just sore because you made the wrong decision to learn Delphi.

Re:"mentioned"

[JustOK]

Don't worry, it's going to get all tangled up in the .NET

Re:"mentioned"

[dragonxtc]

Ironically did you know the guy that designed Delphi also designed C#?

Java too complex

[HNS-I]

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.

Re:Java too complex

[thetoadwarrior]

That's the idea behind JavaFX.

Re:Java too complex

[minginqunt]

As a professional Java programmer, I've watched as Java-the-language has stagnated. Java-the-platform has only thrived thanks to Open Source, and no thanks to the sclerotic Java Community Process and an ineffectual steward in Sun Microsystems.

Java programmers have watched in horror as C# gained fully reified generics, lambdas and closures, arbitrary monadic comprehensions and Hindley-Milner type inference, whilst we've only grudgingly been allowed a broken generics model whilst Sun spent years rejecting and rewriting closure proposals that are still 1-2 years away from adoption.

C# is thriving because it has a benevolent dictator in the form of Anders Hjelberg. Java the language is a stagnant mess.

Re:Java too complex

[spottedkangaroo]

Indeed. He has the knowledge of a real insider, but keeps up on other languages too. If I had points I'd mod you up for saying he should be modded up.

Re:Java too complex

[Anpheus]

Moreover, Microsoft seems to earnestly care about putting the geekiest of the geeks in charge of their language development. They have quite a few functional programmers who have a significant say in the future of languages like F#, and continue to produce great libraries for the CLR.

And now of course, IronPython is a dream scripting language that's incredibly easy to host and entirely open source to boot.

I think people unnecessarily mock Ballmer for "Developers, developers, developers!" He was right. It worked, and Java lost, despite having done so many things right first, and having nailed cross-platform application and service design. Or at least, Java is in the process of losing.

Re:Java too complex

[MemoryDragon]

Actually the field where java shines is the enterprise part and there it is really well located and very popular, banks corporations etc.. all use java they simply love its stability and portability (have in mind many of them run big irons, and java scales up and up on those machines)

if .net has managed one thing then to kill java from the desktop, but Sun is equally to blame there as well with Swing having been way to slow until java 4!
Other than that .Net made major inroads in Windows dev shops and generally windows environments where it was to be expected if it was better than VB which it definitely was!

Re:Java too complex

[IBBoard]

One thing I've noticed with generics as a "Java-by-profession, C#-by-hobby" developer is that I prefer many parts of the Java implementation. Having access to the generic parameter type in C# is useful, but it is far more likely that I need the "PARAM_TYPE extends SomeClassOrInterface" method rather than C#'s fixed generic parameters (at least in C# 2.0, which is what I target since Mono has good support and it isn't too huge a download for WinXP users if they don't have it).

Re:Java too complex

[LordAndrewSama]

Too little, too late.

Re:Java too complex

[CxDoo]

Gee, I have mod points but could not help but notice your modesty - why exclude yourself?

If someone has mod points, please mod us all up!

Re:Java too complex

[motorhead]

Somebody modded a comment of mine up and now my karma is neutral. It was bad for years and a source of pride for me. Feh!

Re:Java too complex

[gbjbaanb]

I think people unnecessarily mock Ballmer for "Developers, developers, developers!" He was right.

That's not just Ballmer's slogan, Microsoft has focussed on that for the past 15+ years. The trick is to get developers writing code for your platform, and then you'll sell loads of platforms. No manager will buy an alternative because they won't be able to get devs who know alternatives, while there will be plenty of Microsoft developers. That reduces the risk of deploying a platform... and so we see where we are today, an ecosystem built around Windows.

It was no big surprise that C# became popular, all those Windows devs suddenly thought they needed to learn it or be shut out of the Windows job market, and so they all demanded C# skills, and so managers started to find that they could only recruit C# devs. It helped that the language was such that you could only poke fun at it in relatively minor ways (unlike, say VB that never caught on in such a massive way amongst 'professional' developers)

Java, I'd say has lost the war, even if there are a few more battles to be fought and C++ seems to be hanging on in there. However, I think I see a glimmer of hope (for the not-more-blinking-MS-stuff view) in scripting languages. MS hasn't targeted that yet, IronPython is still a 'toy' to MS. Maybe soon it'll start to battle cross-platform scripting languages too.

Re:Java too complex

[MemoryDragon]

Java is relatively stagnant but that is also the reason why big buisnesses simply love it, if you want to stay on the edge and keep the platform then use scala or groovy, there you have closures etc...
The platform is more healthy than ever and java as language has become the same status as cobol had in the 70s, stagnant but widely used!
As for the JCP you know that 90% of the work the JCP does revolves around the platform not the language?

Re:Java too complex

[Hurricane78]

Yet another comment by someone who thinks Java is “applets in my browser”.

Java is THE dominant language for mobile phone development (96% of all phones support it, the other 4% allow it with a little precompiler), and “enterprise” server development (where is is the fastest mainstream non-C language, except for [maybe] OCaml/Haskell).

Java is not only going strong, with no decline in sight. It is dominant in many sectors.

Re:Java too complex

[popeyethesailor]

However, I think I see a glimmer of hope (for the not-more-blinking-MS-stuff view) in scripting languages..

Powershell is pervasive now. Every MS product now has powershell hooks. Most command-line utilities are being folded into Powershell extensions. While the language itself is not to my taste(I much prefer the *nix shells still), it's a big improvement alright.

Re:Java too complex

[MemoryDragon]

Java only has lost the war if you thing the entire world runs on windows and develops for Windows only, sorry it is like that!
I work in banking environments where the language is very strong, the reason simply is you develop on windows, then deploy on Unix and the deployment scales up to the big irons from IBM if you need to!

All I can see on C# side for now is that it has gotten the ground that VB and ASP had before, that is the market of develop for windows deploy on windows. Ok this is quite a big market but this is only one part of the picture.

Now with Android we also have a serious push of java being a very popular platform programming language for mobile phones again instead of the trash of J2ME.
It is not branded java but the Dalvik VM has clearly java roots!

As I said C# has mostly gathered the ground which was occupied by Microsoft before anyway, quite a big ground but territory java never had.

Re:Java too complex

[rabbit994]

Powershell was never designed to be used by day to day admins in general administration tasks. GUI for many things allows you to look up data or make one off changes much quicker. Powershell is designed to be used by admins to script common tasks they do daily. I have a Powershell script that will parse a comma delimited text file and add every line in there as Active Directory user with Exchange Mailbox. When we get 30 new employees at work, I modify some parameters on Powershell script, take list from HR and bam, in 15 minutes, I've added 30 new users with Exchange mailboxes. That's purpose of Powershell.

Re:Java too complex

[Ralish]

I'm of the opinion that part of the reason for Java's slower than many anticipated adoption is just how badly it integrated into the native GUI environment of the host. For a very long time, and still persisting into the present, Java apps often looked downright awful on many systems. You can frequently tell something's a Java app purely by how ugly and out of place it looks compared to the native apps. Sun has made progress in addressing this, but it may be too little too late. I think the language as a whole is pretty good, and somewhat unfairly maligned, but the importance of the apps looking at least reasonable seems to have been underrated by the Java developers.

On the other hand, .NET is pretty much guaranteed to look at least reasonable on Windows. Of course, the fact it was targeted at Windows clearly goes a long way to simplifying this. I doubt Microsoft was thinking "We need to design this so it looks great and integrates on Windows, Linux, OS X, and everything else". But, that being said, for many developers it looking good on Windows is all that matters, in that it may be the only platform they're intending to develop for or support, so why go to all the extra effort in Java to make it look presentable when .NET makes it so much easier? There's of course many other pros/cons to each language, but I doubt the proliferation of ugly-as-sin Java apps is particularly good for its image, even if it is a very facile way of judging a language.

Don't underestimate the importance of presentation!

Re:Java too complex

[WinterSolstice]

You may be right here. I have, on many occasions, had to program reasonable size DB apps in both.

Java.makes.me.want.to.claw.my.eyes.out() .NET may only be truly on windows, but it's actually not so bad to code in. I wrote a DB reporting and maint. app in C# in roughly 2 weeks, the previous version of which in Java took almost 2 months.

Major things, IME that made the difference?
Crazy easy remote DB access (sure, neither are exactly rocket science, but .net was quicker and more flexible)
Easy installs - this had me from the start. I wasn't writing a web app, but a desktop app. The C# one was a breeze, the Java one a major headache
Attractive frontends - this will probably start yet another flamewar, but many of the java frontends are HIDEOUS
Performance when doing large dataset manipulations - for example, determining which server had the least free space, or which one had the most obsolete users. These are fairly trivial sorting tasks, but the java version took probably twice as long and more memory (in my implementation, which may well have sucked to be frank).
Support for dumping data into Excel and Word - this was a killer feature. I was able to generate SOX and sizing reports on the fly with C#. Java? No such luck. I never did get it working quickly and properly.

Re:Java too complex

[adonoman]

Have you actually used powershell? They've predefined common aliases for most of the command (ls, cd, del - just type get-alias (or gal) to get the full list). All the parameters can be used both positionally, or as named parameters where you only need to provide enough of the name that it's unambiguous (usually one or two characters is enough). On top of all that, there is tab-completion for object members and such. The purpose of the long, descriptive names is for writing scripts. I can use the abbreviated aliases and shorthands when I'm at the command line, and yet still write scripts that are legible, without having to look up whether -r means recurse or revision in a given context when I'm debugging a script a year later.

Re:Java too complex

[JasterBobaMereel]

To program on windows nowadays you program in a .NET language

So it is not taking over from Java, it's taking over from Windows non-.NET languages

Java is alive and well and still running on platforms .NET could never dream of ....

Re:Java too complex

[shutdown -p now]

One thing I've noticed with generics as a "Java-by-profession, C#-by-hobby" developer is that I prefer many parts of the Java implementation. Having access to the generic parameter type in C# is useful, but it is far more likely that I need the "PARAM_TYPE extends SomeClassOrInterface" method rather than C#'s fixed generic parameters (at least in C# 2.0, which is what I target since Mono has good support and it isn't too huge a download for WinXP users if they don't have it).

C# 2.0 has constraints on generic type parameters of classes and methods, which are exactly equivalent (albeit more verbose) than Java "extends". E.g. you can write:

void Sort(T[] a) where T: IComparable<T>

It doesn't have wildcards, though those can always be replaced by named parameters in generic declaration context.

There are two things missing. First, you cannot write anything equivalent to this Java code:

List<? extends Foo> list;

Again, this is because wildcards aren't supported, and it's not a generic declaration, so there's no way to introduce a named type parameter.

The other thing that's missing is "super" constraint. For example, this cannot be rewritten in C# while preserving full genericity of the method:

<T> void add(List<? super T> xs, T x) {
    xs.add(x);
}

because "add" is contravariant, this needs the corresponding supertype constraint if we want this to work on any compatible list, but there is none in C#.

On the other hand, C# generics are fully reified - so you can have T[], and new T(), and x is T.

Also, in C# 4, a new feature is declaration-site covariance and contravariance of classes. For example, IEnumerable - which is the .NET counterpart of Java Iterable - is now declared thus:

interface IEnumerable<out T /* covariant*/> { ... }

which means that you can write:

IEnumerable<Derived> xs;
IEnumerable<Base> ys = xs; // implicit upcast

In Java, you'd have to use "? extends Base" on the second line above, and in any similar context.

Unfortunately, this doesn't help with classes for which some operations are covariant, and some are contravariant, like List. For those, Java wildcards and constraints (which are effectively use-site variance declarations) do better.

.Not

[should_be_linear]

Joking aside, Java is multiplatform in practice and .Net is only in theory.

Re:.Not

[ByOhTek]

Actually, I'd argue Java is also only in theory.

I've had to re-write too much stuff because a java built in function relied on native libraries, which did not act the same (regular expression handling in 1.4 and earlier, is a good example - go betweeen HPUX, Linux and Windows, and there can be serious issues). A lot of the UI stuff doesn't work well between versions either.

It's gotten better, but on a similar note, anything I've used from .NET in VS 2003 and earlier, and quite a bit of later stuff, works just fine on Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.

Each has their flaws in cross platform use - .NET's issues tend to arise when using newer APIs, and Java tend to have small gotchas, which in most cases are rare, scattered throughout the code.

Re:.Not

[MemoryDragon]

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...

Re:.Not

[minginqunt]

The interesting thing was that Sun used WORA as a surrogate argument to accept the validity of virtual machines. It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when VMs were treated with scepticism or outright hostility by most programmers.

These days it's hard to imagine creating a programming language that wouldn't adopt a VM of some kind.

Neither the CLR or the JVM truly enable WORA, but it doesn't matter. We have learned that VMs have a value to a programming language *far* beyond that rather limited concern.

Re:.Not

[FlyingBishop]

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.

Re:.Not

[oldhack]

You're comparing odd bugs in Java implementations to .NET's inherent (and intended) tight coupling with Windows platform. Qualitatively different.

Re:.Not

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:.Not

[jedidiah]

> 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.

Depends on the goals

[IBBoard]

It depends what the goals were.

If they wanted to completely depose Java then no, Java is still there.

If they wanted to introduce a Windows-centric alternative to re-invigorate desktop development and replace the horrors of C++ and VB with something with more modern and useful layers of abstraction and code checking that were already in Java (typed delegates, generic types, garbage collection, etc) then it seems to have done all right.

If they wanted to tear the OSS world in two with arguments over whether it .Net "teh evilz" or not then that'd be a definite yes, even thought more and more patent covenants are coming in to cover Mono (despite the fact that patent covenants shouldn't even be necessary if the legal system was sensible enough not to allow the patenting of software).

The really big win with .Net

[wiredog]

Is that so much of it wraps, and hides the complexity of, COM. I haven't had to deal with COM programming in 5 years now.

No Java or C# please

[newhoggy]

I was initially excited by .net when it was first released and have preferred it over Java, which as a language seemed to have stagnate. Now, I am finding C# quite a disappointment with Microsoft not investing the time and energy to ensure the features they add to the language are polished:

* Adding extension methods without also adding extension properties
* Refusing to implementing covariant return types
* Adding type inference, but disallowing it for class method return types

As so forth. Microsoft simply doesn't have the discipline to finish any feature addition to the language before moving to the next.

That doesn't mean I prefer Java either. I only use Java and C# at work out of necessity.

My language of choice is now Scala.

Consider this.

[v(*_*)vvvv]

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.

Point & Click programming

[thetoadwarrior]

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.

Re:Point & Click programming

[Liquidrage]

No. People like .NET because of the very clean implementation of modern OOP principles. The drop & drag coding typically aims at mundane tasks. And the heavy OOP nature of .NET left behind a lot of the "developers" you're referring to.

Re:Point & Click programming

[Mr2001]

You realize the "point and click" stuff is for laying out dialog boxes, right?

Writing boilerplate code to lay out controls and handle window messages wasn't some noble art that's been lost. It was low level tedium that distracted from real programming. I remember opening Petzold's Windows programming book and being horrified that the code for "Hello World" spanned several pages.

I don't know about your wages, but I get paid a fair amount for my time to write C#, and that time is a lot more productive and enjoyable thanks to such things as IDEs and component libraries.

It is not a Java vs .NET world

[rodrix79]

I think the register is oversimplifying here. PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python, Scala... Sure Java is a complicated beast and it has become more and more difficult to sell to new customers, but .NET is not the only one eating Java's pie. Now, I wonder: how much .NET customers have found out they overpaid for a .NET application when they could have done as good with an X language alternative?

.NET or .NOT?

[CxDoo]

The answer is, as always, it depends.

If you expected cure for cancer, it failed miserably.
However, if you were involved with any of the likes of MFC, ATL, Visual Basic 6 and bellow, DAO, Interop & COM (to name just a few), it is to be regarded as the second coming of Christ.

Goods and Bads

[dcray2000]

We use both heavily in our enterprise. I tend to lean toward Java because of the wide spread use across platforms. But I agree that the underlying framework of Java is ridiculously complex. We spend a huge amount of time dealing with the JRE rather than writing and supporting actual code.

On the other hand, .net, visual studio, MSSQL, AD, and IIS are a seriously tight integrated platform. I've seen even our most junior devs author amazing sites using the pure Microsoft tools.

Overall, I'd say I'm on the fence. I wish Sun would remove head from ass and get the JRE to a better versioning system that allows old apps to keep running along with new apps, similar to the .net framework methodology. If they could pull that off Java would really start to storm our environments.

Re:Asp.Net is NOT a 'popular' business framework.

[bit trollent]

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...

Re:Asp.Net is NOT a 'popular' business framework.

[blowdart]

the projects you will see in contract websites like elance, rentacoder and the like will be predominantly php+mysql

Well of course you will. The projects on those sites are looking for cheap implementation and damn any sort of quality or maintainability. The register didn't look at those sorts of sites, they looked at recruiting sites instead, the ones businesses use. Using the slime pool that is the "Write me a twitter clone for $100" sites to say LAMP is the most popular in businesses is laughable.

Current Monster Numbers: Java vs .NET

[CritterNYC]

I thought the article may be overstating .NET's popularity, so let's take a quick look at listings on monster.com. Here are the results of a US-wide search for each of the terms (at 9am on 2009-12-18):

C#: 2,920
(Just) .NET: 3,632
ASP.NET: 1,714
Java: 5,000+

If we narrow it to posts in the last 7 days:

C#: 971
(Just) .NET: 1,095
ASP.NET: 524
Java: 1,608

Or if I select my location, New York City, over the last 60 days:

C#: 223
(Just) .NET: 239
ASP.NET: 91
Java: 591

As expected, there is a lot more demand for Java developers than C#, ASP.NET or even .NET framework itself.

(Note: I added the prefix (Just) to the .NET line as otherwise SourceForge won't let it be separated onto a new line)

Re:Current Monster Numbers: Java vs .NET

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Silverlight

[dzfoo]

Strange that you mentioned 10 years, because as the article claims, .Net was announced in 2001, and introduced in 2002. So even if you started using it the day it came out, the framework is still only 7 years old.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#Versions

Do you by chance have one of those jobs posted circa 2004 asking for "10 years experience in .NET"?

        -dZ.

MS really does care about making devs happy

[Sycraft-fu]

Of course their reasons for doing it are not benevolent, they want software designed for Windows so that users want to use Windows. Regardless, they produce extremely slick dev tools because of it. Often the things maligned by self proclaimed "real" programmers are actually quite useful dev tools in the right situations.

Visual Basic is a good example, all sorts of geeks liked to hate on VB as being stupid. While they were on to something in that VB wasn't powerful like C/C++, they missed that the reason was that VB was a managed language back before such a thing was popular. It allowed you to easily churn out UIs and things like that with minimal effort and without the need to check for the gotchas you got with something like C. Hence it was quite popular.

What MS has done real well is realized that most developers out there are NOT the hard core "Give me a text editor or give me death!" types. They are people in business trying to get something done, and get it done with minimal fuss and hassle. They also likely have to put up with management idiots who want to change the requirements every 5 minutes and thus being able to rapidly change the software is a benefit.

They really do seem to be a company that is in touch with what developers want.

Ease of writing doesn't convince me

[Mutatis Mutandis]

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.

Alternate JVM languages will carry the JVM.

[Joseph Vigneau]

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.

Re:Alternate JVM languages will carry the JVM.

[shutdown -p now]

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 those third-party JVM-hosted languages have two big problems hampering their adoption.

The first one is lack of proper IDE support. And the problem with this target is that it shifts constantly - ten years ago we had much less than we have today. Think about how many automated Java refactorings a typical Java IDE offers today. Then there are things like code pattern search in IDEA. And so on... the challenge of making a new language is making all the tooling for it as well, and it inevitably competes with feature-rich and mature solutions that already exist for Java.

The second problem, which is probably even bigger, is the lack of a big corporate backer. With Java, there's Sun and Google. With C#, there's Microsoft. With C++, there are way too many to list - Intel, IBM, Apple, Sun, Google, Microsoft all have major stakes in it, and consequently work on language design together in the ISO committee. But something like Scala? What's the guarantee that it will be around tomorrow?

Which is a real pity, to be honest. Scala is an awesome language, probably the perfect in its (pragmatical hybrid OO/FP) niche. If e.g. Google were to seriously back it, it would really help its adoption. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's happening.

In contrast, the adoption drive behind F# (yes, there are fairly large companies out there using F# in production code) is largely because of Microsoft backing it, officially supporting it as part of VS, and so on - which is why I suspect it will keep growing.

Re:no, you are talking out of your ass.

[beuges]

A common trend I've noticed amongst the vast (99%) majority of PHP developers is that they are almost guaranteed to be
a) completely devoted to PHP
b) incredibly arrogant
c) mediocre developers at best