4 ms·

How does this compare to the .NET ecosystem?

dRaBoQ 7y ago
Why downvote ? C#/Visual Studio is one of the best languages out there.
paulmd 7y ago
C# is a better language. Java 8 started to catch up with some of the quality-of-live niceties, but Java has a lot of mistakes baked into the language and interfaces that can't be removed without potentially breaking a lot of stuff, which the consortium is not willing to do. C# and DotNet were designed with the wisdom gained from the early days of Java implementation and sidestepped a lot of these messes. Java has a substantially better ecosystem. The tooling is just miles ahead of what exists in the DotNet world. Until very recently you developed in Visual Studio and you ran on Windows in production and that was that. They're working on Linux support and a broader ecosystem but they are probably a decade behind what is available on Java. Even stuff like package management is crude, NuGet is a joke compared to Gradle.
- GordonS 7y ago
  Packet is a great alternative to the NuGet client. Tooling might be slightly behind Java's, but honestly, there's not much in it. Dotnet Core might only have been available on Linux for a few years, but Mono was around for many before that. The dotnet CLI also recently got the concept of 'global tools', which are akin to NPMs. A lot of work is also underway on better cross-platform performance analysis, crash dump handling and the like for runtime in production[0] Is there anything in particular you miss? [0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-diagnostics-improvements-in-net-core-3-0/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-diagnostic...
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    According to the roadmap, Mono's JVM interop used for Xamarin Android will be making its way more directly into .NET Core and will light up on almost every platform, which would give .NET greater, direct access to the Java ecosystem as well.
  - hello_moto 7y ago
    Maybe not much that the OP miss. But then again there's nothing to miss from Java either since Java fulfill his requirements (maybe more than .NET can). If I'm a Java developer who has been using Maven for such a long time. I don't see the allure switching to .NET just because NuGet exist or whatever Packet stands for. The big data ecosystem is all JVM/Java. Android started off as Java. Sure they have Kotlin now, but I don't know how many developers switching to Kotlin in drives. Basically, the ecosystem of Java is already _there_ when MSFT is trying to catch it up so experienced Devs (a.k.a people who are already comfortable with the tooling) do not see the reason to switch. As for me myself, I used to intern at MSFT back in the mid 2000 drinking the .NET kool-aid. One day I woke up and realize that part of the hi-tech world that interest me, relies a lot on OSS and the large portion of OSS was Java. Fast forward to today, FAANG is mostly Java shop. Java seems like a safer ground for me to have a longer career. That's just me and my 2c. I'm too lazy to switch to .NET since there's no added value at the moment unless if I want to do back-office in-house web-app.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  What about Kotlin?
- eitland 7y ago
  > C# is a better language. Yep, as a seasoned Java developer I agree. There are times when I miss a part of the Java syntax but they are few and far between. > Java has a substantially better ecosystem. The tooling is just miles ahead of what exists in the DotNet world. Also true, although it is getting closer fast. Possibly more important: they are both in another league compared most other languages. (Of the other languages/stacks I have some production experience with Angular/TypeScript is the only that I feel has anything close to the tooling support that C# and especially Java has.)
- pron 7y ago
  > but Java has a lot of mistakes baked into the language and interfaces that can't be removed without potentially breaking a lot of stuff Absolutely true, but so does C#. In the end it turned out that .NET's reified generics were a mistake (which makes language interop on .NET painful), and more recently async/await.
  - tomp 7y ago
    > In the end it turned out that .NET's reified generics were a mistake Do you have any resources that explain this point further? Reified generics have often been praised as the thing that CLR got right (and JVM got wrong). I never understood fully why that is, especially since other languages with generics (e.g. Haskell and OCaml) don't have anything reified (although in all honesty also don't have RTTI so it's really not necessary).
    - pron 7y ago
      Erasure makes it easy for Java, Kotlin, and Clojure share code and data structures without costly runtime conversions. Languages like Scala and F# have had trouble implementing features on the CLR because of reification, and take a look at what Python and Clojure on the CLR have to go through for interop. I know some people think that say they like reified generics in C#, but those are mostly people who aren't aware of what cost to the entire ecosystem they're paying in exchange to what is a minor convenience in C#. BTW, reification of reference-type generics is not to be confused with specializing collections for value types ("arrays-of-struct") an extremely important feature that CLR indeed has, and Java is now working on getting.
    - eropple 7y ago
      "Mistake" is a strong word, and I would disagree with it. But when building extensible libraries and systems I do often find myself wanting to pass around a List<Something<?>>, which isn't doable without writing a second generic interface or the like. On the flip side, in Java (or, these days, Kotlin), a type-erased generic can be mediated more easily because passing a Class is easier than adding a second interface. Part of it is that a lot of that stuff is gamedev-related, for me. It's not the biggest thing in the world, but for a lot of the stuff I find myself writing in C#, I find myself wishing for type erasure to make throwing data around a little easier. On the other hand, though, when writing web stuff on the JVM--I absolutely will not waste my time doing this in .NET, ASP.NET Core is not very good and EF Core is awful--I often wish for type reification, so it's just a horses-for-courses thing.
- chvid 7y ago
  The JVM has multiple languages such as Kotlin, Scala and Groovy. Each of them arguably being a better language than Java. That most people still prefer to build projects in Java shows that other things such as backward compability, how many developers know the language, tool chain and so on matters more than the isolated technical merits of the language.
  - ivan_gammel 7y ago
    Cannot agree more. Syntactic sugar or certain more advanced constructs in the end have very low ROI for experienced developers, which can utilize very well the existing language features and extend their expressive power with internal DSLs. The costs associated with the tooling, hiring people with necessary expertise etc at that point are more important.
jimmaswell 7y ago
Lightyears behind it. There's no reason Java is still prevalent besides inertia. .NET/.NET Core is going to slowly but surely overtake it with Java shooting itself in the foot with the new licensing terms and .NET/C#'s far better feature set/better design (lessons learned from Java/JVM's mistakes were able to be fixed in C#/.NET)

Why downvote ? C#/Visual Studio is one of the best languages out there.

C# is a better language. Java 8 started to catch up with some of the quality-of-live niceties, but Java has a lot of mistakes baked into the language and interfaces that can't be removed without potentially breaking a lot of stuff, which the consortium is not willing to do. C# and DotNet were designed with the wisdom gained from the early days of Java implementation and sidestepped a lot of these messes. Java has a substantially better ecosystem. The tooling is just miles ahead of what exists in the DotNet world. Until very recently you developed in Visual Studio and you ran on Windows in production and that was that. They're working on Linux support and a broader ecosystem but they are probably a decade behind what is available on Java. Even stuff like package management is crude, NuGet is a joke compared to Gradle.

GordonS 7y ago
Packet is a great alternative to the NuGet client. Tooling might be slightly behind Java's, but honestly, there's not much in it. Dotnet Core might only have been available on Linux for a few years, but Mono was around for many before that. The dotnet CLI also recently got the concept of 'global tools', which are akin to NPMs. A lot of work is also underway on better cross-platform performance analysis, crash dump handling and the like for runtime in production[0] Is there anything in particular you miss? [0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-diagnostics-improvements-in-net-core-3-0/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-diagnostic...
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  According to the roadmap, Mono's JVM interop used for Xamarin Android will be making its way more directly into .NET Core and will light up on almost every platform, which would give .NET greater, direct access to the Java ecosystem as well.
- hello_moto 7y ago
  Maybe not much that the OP miss. But then again there's nothing to miss from Java either since Java fulfill his requirements (maybe more than .NET can). If I'm a Java developer who has been using Maven for such a long time. I don't see the allure switching to .NET just because NuGet exist or whatever Packet stands for. The big data ecosystem is all JVM/Java. Android started off as Java. Sure they have Kotlin now, but I don't know how many developers switching to Kotlin in drives. Basically, the ecosystem of Java is already _there_ when MSFT is trying to catch it up so experienced Devs (a.k.a people who are already comfortable with the tooling) do not see the reason to switch. As for me myself, I used to intern at MSFT back in the mid 2000 drinking the .NET kool-aid. One day I woke up and realize that part of the hi-tech world that interest me, relies a lot on OSS and the large portion of OSS was Java. Fast forward to today, FAANG is mostly Java shop. Java seems like a safer ground for me to have a longer career. That's just me and my 2c. I'm too lazy to switch to .NET since there's no added value at the moment unless if I want to do back-office in-house web-app.
mixmastamyk 7y ago
What about Kotlin?
eitland 7y ago
> C# is a better language. Yep, as a seasoned Java developer I agree. There are times when I miss a part of the Java syntax but they are few and far between. > Java has a substantially better ecosystem. The tooling is just miles ahead of what exists in the DotNet world. Also true, although it is getting closer fast. Possibly more important: they are both in another league compared most other languages. (Of the other languages/stacks I have some production experience with Angular/TypeScript is the only that I feel has anything close to the tooling support that C# and especially Java has.)
pron 7y ago
> but Java has a lot of mistakes baked into the language and interfaces that can't be removed without potentially breaking a lot of stuff Absolutely true, but so does C#. In the end it turned out that .NET's reified generics were a mistake (which makes language interop on .NET painful), and more recently async/await.
- tomp 7y ago
  > In the end it turned out that .NET's reified generics were a mistake Do you have any resources that explain this point further? Reified generics have often been praised as the thing that CLR got right (and JVM got wrong). I never understood fully why that is, especially since other languages with generics (e.g. Haskell and OCaml) don't have anything reified (although in all honesty also don't have RTTI so it's really not necessary).
  - pron 7y ago
    Erasure makes it easy for Java, Kotlin, and Clojure share code and data structures without costly runtime conversions. Languages like Scala and F# have had trouble implementing features on the CLR because of reification, and take a look at what Python and Clojure on the CLR have to go through for interop. I know some people think that say they like reified generics in C#, but those are mostly people who aren't aware of what cost to the entire ecosystem they're paying in exchange to what is a minor convenience in C#. BTW, reification of reference-type generics is not to be confused with specializing collections for value types ("arrays-of-struct") an extremely important feature that CLR indeed has, and Java is now working on getting.
  - eropple 7y ago
    "Mistake" is a strong word, and I would disagree with it. But when building extensible libraries and systems I do often find myself wanting to pass around a List<Something<?>>, which isn't doable without writing a second generic interface or the like. On the flip side, in Java (or, these days, Kotlin), a type-erased generic can be mediated more easily because passing a Class is easier than adding a second interface. Part of it is that a lot of that stuff is gamedev-related, for me. It's not the biggest thing in the world, but for a lot of the stuff I find myself writing in C#, I find myself wishing for type erasure to make throwing data around a little easier. On the other hand, though, when writing web stuff on the JVM--I absolutely will not waste my time doing this in .NET, ASP.NET Core is not very good and EF Core is awful--I often wish for type reification, so it's just a horses-for-courses thing.
chvid 7y ago
The JVM has multiple languages such as Kotlin, Scala and Groovy. Each of them arguably being a better language than Java. That most people still prefer to build projects in Java shows that other things such as backward compability, how many developers know the language, tool chain and so on matters more than the isolated technical merits of the language.
- ivan_gammel 7y ago
  Cannot agree more. Syntactic sugar or certain more advanced constructs in the end have very low ROI for experienced developers, which can utilize very well the existing language features and extend their expressive power with internal DSLs. The costs associated with the tooling, hiring people with necessary expertise etc at that point are more important.

jimmaswell 7y ago

Lightyears behind it. There's no reason Java is still prevalent besides inertia. .NET/.NET Core is going to slowly but surely overtake it with Java shooting itself in the foot with the new licensing terms and .NET/C#'s far better feature set/better design (lessons learned from Java/JVM's mistakes were able to be fixed in C#/.NET)