Is still java certification paying off?

[Rod Abreu]

Lately, I've been listening to some friends of mine that Java will end up substituted by MS .net.
They say that .net is easier, faster to implement, deploy and maintain. They also said that, Microsoft is implementing all the requests developers have been made recently and Sun doesn't.
Obviously, the certifications will not have too many job impact as we hope.
I would like to know the opinion around the world about this issue.

[Marc Peabody]

I do not completely disagree with some of the benefits you listed about .Net.
I would actually say that the best thing they have over Java is WebForms... and so far JSF doesn't come close.
If .Net were really so simple all the work with it would have been offshored to lower-wage countries by now.
Ignore the talk of one technology replacing the other. Both sides have been making claims for years.

[Jon McDonald]

.NET is competition to J2EE but it probably won't destroy J2EE. The main reason why I say that is that in chosing .net, you are locking yourself into certain platform choices. First, your developers have to have Visual Studio.net, second, your application servers must be from microsoft, third your OS must be from microsoft.
With Java, you have a variety of IDE, Application Server, and Operating System options. One could design an IDE/App Server/OS software package for Java that is 5-10 times the cost of of a .net package, or one could design an IDE/App Server/OS software package for Java that is virtually free. With the microsoft products, your only choice is microsoft level of support and microft level of reliability. Again, java gives you a much greater range of support and reliability options. These are just some of the reasons why Java may be chosen over microsoft in many (but not all) cases.
Jon

[Steven Broadbent]

you can use web matrix actually - it's freeware!

[Kishore Dandu]

There are many big firms who did benchmarks and went in the direction of J2EE in most cases & in the direction of .net in some cases.
Due to its superiority on the serverside, J2EE and .net are interoperably used in the finance sector.(by way of client side being .net driven and server side being J2EE and communicate using Web services).
.net does have some advantages on the client aspect, but pales down on the server side(in my personal experience).

[Billy Tsai]

J2EE has webforms in various frameworks too kinda like the struts validation framework.
like in Intershop's ISML and pipeline and pipelet have webforms too.
and Intershop's products r all Java/J2EE based

[Jeroen Wenting]

John, Visual Studio .NET is certainly NOT required to write .NET programs.
Borland for example has a line of programming languages that work seamlessly with .NET.
You aren't locking yourself into any one OS or hardware architecture either (at least in theory), as .NET is an open standard. Anyone is free to provide a runtime environment for any OS they want to.
In some regards, it's more platform independent (at least in theory) than is Java for the very simple reason that you're not binding yourself to a single programming language.