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As another java dev who is glad I didn't get stuck with .Net seven years ago, why do I want it not? We're doing fine: deployed on centos6, devs on OSX and win

As another java dev who is glad I didn't get stuck with .Net seven years ago, why do I want it not? We're doing fine: deployed on centos6, devs on OSX and win 7. Intellij licenses are the least of our problems, compared to the clusterfuck that we dumped. So tell me MS: What do you give me that Spring Boot, Scala, etc.

pjmlp 10y ago
AOT compilation for free instead of having to buy Excelsior JET, J9, Atego, .... Ability to write SIMD code. Real value types and ability to write almost C++ like code with structs and pointers, in case performance requires ask for it. No JNI, rather developer friendly P/Invoke, RCW and C++/CLI for interoperating with native code. No need to go fetch a VM plugin from somewhere, just to be able to debug the quality of machine code being generated. Powerful desktop stack that is actually used. F# is much better than Scala for those that enjoy ML languages and is available by default. No need to ask for permission to install it. Ability to target the HoloLens, XBox, iOS and Android.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Second on the sane P/Invoke and interop in general... main reason why I jumped to .Net very early on. By comparison, every time I touch Java it feels like an exercise in frustration, though seems better since Maven. I'd also say that MVC/Razor, etc is much nicer than the Java counterparts I've seen... though I tend to not be too idiomatic with it when I've used it, very nice. Razor is probably my all time favorite view engine, though harder to use outside a web context (emails). The much less terse syntax for generics is another big one over Java... with Java, it feels like all you save by having generics is lost with the extra syntax and typing you have to do... for example the LINQ functions (I actually don't care for the syntax) in C# are great, and the lamda expression syntax is awesome too. I haven't used F#, but every time I see an article, I think about how awesome it looks, and seems to be more approachable than some other FP languages. Although I took a diagonal step and do a lot of mostly functional JS these days (I like and work a lot in node's good use cases). Oh, another one, the .Net docker containers are MUCH smaller than Java...
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    I work across Java, .NET and C++. It surely feels strange to argue for .NET given how it started and how I also bashed it back in the early days, specially since my employer had access to early versions of it pre-1.0. But nowadays is just feels better. However Oracle is actually making the effort to improve the whole generics/JNI/AOT compilation story, but those improvements are only targeted for Java 10 and beyond, while .NET has those features today. And Android developers are not going to get them anyway.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Yeah, interop was one of the things that .Net/C# got very right, very early on, of course the framework libraries themselves leveraged windows internals quite a bit early on, so it was very important. When .Net 3.5 came out is when, imho C# was pretty much done, in terms of language features, I mean there's been a few things since, but it was a joy to work with compared to anything else at 3.5. I don't agree with everything they've done, and it continues to improve. I've been reaching for node.js far more often the past couple years than I have for .Net though. Being able to deploy on Linux has been a pretty significant requirement for a lot of things, and node allows really quick ramp-up, though there are too many "expert" JS devs that aren't. I'm hoping to find an excuse to play around with VS Code and .Net core bits pretty soon... then again, I've been saying the same for rust and go for a while as well.
philliphaydon 10y ago
I tried learning Java on several occasions. I'm glad I threw in the towel. Living in Asia, pay is so much lower than .NET.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Here in the US they seem to be about on par... though I find the Java devs I've dealt with have tended more arrogant and closed minded, ironically enough.
  - codingmyway 10y ago
    Interesting. In the UK Java gets a slight premium and there's still the impression that .net devs are more siloed and don't keep up with things so much but that is changing. Not sure what proportion of Java devs know Scala vs .Net/F# but seems like .Net is catching up on that front and C# is more functional friendly and ahead of Java on that front.
romanovcode 10y ago
I don't get it. I work on OSX with .NET Core using nothing but open-source tools. Are you from 2006?

pjmlp 10y ago

AOT compilation for free instead of having to buy Excelsior JET, J9, Atego, .... Ability to write SIMD code. Real value types and ability to write almost C++ like code with structs and pointers, in case performance requires ask for it. No JNI, rather developer friendly P/Invoke, RCW and C++/CLI for interoperating with native code. No need to go fetch a VM plugin from somewhere, just to be able to debug the quality of machine code being generated. Powerful desktop stack that is actually used. F# is much better than Scala for those that enjoy ML languages and is available by default. No need to ask for permission to install it. Ability to target the HoloLens, XBox, iOS and Android.

tracker1 10y ago
Second on the sane P/Invoke and interop in general... main reason why I jumped to .Net very early on. By comparison, every time I touch Java it feels like an exercise in frustration, though seems better since Maven. I'd also say that MVC/Razor, etc is much nicer than the Java counterparts I've seen... though I tend to not be too idiomatic with it when I've used it, very nice. Razor is probably my all time favorite view engine, though harder to use outside a web context (emails). The much less terse syntax for generics is another big one over Java... with Java, it feels like all you save by having generics is lost with the extra syntax and typing you have to do... for example the LINQ functions (I actually don't care for the syntax) in C# are great, and the lamda expression syntax is awesome too. I haven't used F#, but every time I see an article, I think about how awesome it looks, and seems to be more approachable than some other FP languages. Although I took a diagonal step and do a lot of mostly functional JS these days (I like and work a lot in node's good use cases). Oh, another one, the .Net docker containers are MUCH smaller than Java...
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I work across Java, .NET and C++. It surely feels strange to argue for .NET given how it started and how I also bashed it back in the early days, specially since my employer had access to early versions of it pre-1.0. But nowadays is just feels better. However Oracle is actually making the effort to improve the whole generics/JNI/AOT compilation story, but those improvements are only targeted for Java 10 and beyond, while .NET has those features today. And Android developers are not going to get them anyway.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    Yeah, interop was one of the things that .Net/C# got very right, very early on, of course the framework libraries themselves leveraged windows internals quite a bit early on, so it was very important. When .Net 3.5 came out is when, imho C# was pretty much done, in terms of language features, I mean there's been a few things since, but it was a joy to work with compared to anything else at 3.5. I don't agree with everything they've done, and it continues to improve. I've been reaching for node.js far more often the past couple years than I have for .Net though. Being able to deploy on Linux has been a pretty significant requirement for a lot of things, and node allows really quick ramp-up, though there are too many "expert" JS devs that aren't. I'm hoping to find an excuse to play around with VS Code and .Net core bits pretty soon... then again, I've been saying the same for rust and go for a while as well.

philliphaydon 10y ago

I tried learning Java on several occasions. I'm glad I threw in the towel. Living in Asia, pay is so much lower than .NET.

tracker1 10y ago
Here in the US they seem to be about on par... though I find the Java devs I've dealt with have tended more arrogant and closed minded, ironically enough.
- codingmyway 10y ago
  Interesting. In the UK Java gets a slight premium and there's still the impression that .net devs are more siloed and don't keep up with things so much but that is changing. Not sure what proportion of Java devs know Scala vs .Net/F# but seems like .Net is catching up on that front and C# is more functional friendly and ahead of Java on that front.

romanovcode 10y ago

I don't get it. I work on OSX with .NET Core using nothing but open-source tools. Are you from 2006?