Career selection J2ee vs. Net

[kayanaat sidiqui]

Hi all,

Some of my Colleagues say that in future java is going to be outdated.
Because of .Net framework. Is it true?

They always push me to study .Net etc. other than Java.

I am totaly confused, what to do. Specially in this recession time.

Plese help me out. It's related to my career.

Thanks,
Kaya.

[Sagar Rohankar]

kayanaat sidiqui wrote:
Some of my Colleagues say that in future java is going to be outdated.
Because of .Net framework. Is it true?

Ask them about the numerous real enterprise distributed application developed in J2EE, Who's gonna maintain them OR is it going to incorporated in .NET ?

And this subject is discussed here before.

[Tim Holloway]

If you're going to bet the farm on a technology, Microsoft isn't where I'd lay my money down. Aside from the grief they're having convincing people to stay on the Windows treadmill, the primary reason I dropped out of the Microsoft world was that they have no concept of long-term.

Ironic, when you have people saying that ".Net has a future and Java doesn't", but the final straw was when I was working on a SOAP-based interface between an Excel spreadsheet and they basically abandoned the whole API right in the middle of my development and replaced it with a new, incompatible API. Any project over 6 months old based on Microsoft technology was prone not to even be compilable anymore, and while I gave up before .Net took over, I'm not sure I can expect better there. I seem to recall that the early .Net went through some wrenching changes, too.

Java has its ugly side, just like IBM mainframe COBOL. But like IBM mainframe COBOL, you can expect even antique code to build and run. It's part of the basic philosphy.

Besides, if you want to simply chase today's hottest tech, scripting languages are what's in.

[Marcel Wentink]

Tim Holloway wrote:Besides, if you want to simply chase today's hottest tech, scripting languages are what's in.

Like PHP? I see quite a few openings in job search site for that lately.

But you must also take into account one other thing: How ever crappy microsoft technology might be, since they have a big marketing and loads of cash behind it, it will be a leading technology. What is leading, what becomes common, what becomes wanted in the job search market, is not solely decided by the technical quality of the product of concept. Also I do not think .NET is that crappy.

So the question is, what is your goal? Do you want to work with the most advanced technology, or do you want to study the stuff then could get you the best position in a company. The first not excluding the second by the way.

BTW: Actually I just want to earn money.

[Henry Wong]

Plese help me out. It's related to my career.

In my opinion, if this question is related to the type of tools being used, how easy it is to debug, etc. etc., then I guess a .NET vs J2ee is a good discussion.

In terms of a career, I don't it will make much difference. In your career, you will probably learn, use, and then move on, to over a dozen languages, and even more frameworks. You skills is less the languages that you know, and more of the experience that you do with those languages. Those skills will go with you, even when you change languages, and frameworks.

Henry

[Henry Wong]

Also I do not think .NET is that crappy.

Oh, it is definitely *NOT* crappy. It is far from it.

But I don't think Tim is saying that .NET is crappy either. I think he is saying that Microsoft support for it is crappy -- meaning they tend to just change the API from version to version (with little concern for backward compatibility), and not provide any EOL cycle for the older releases.

Henry

[kayanaat sidiqui]

Thank you all for discussing my query.

[Marcel Wentink]

Henry Wong wrote:they tend to just change the API from version to version (with little concern for backward compatibility), and not provide any EOL cycle for the older releases.

Apart from that all your knowledge of such an API can be drawn through the toilet too..!

This reminds me of my MFC-MSVC++ programming days. I have no use of that knowledge now while if I would have programmed Java or Delphi ten years ago, my knowledge probably would still be applicable?

[John Kimball]

For some context, consider how Microsoft abandoned classic VB and in general, is making COM obsolete.
Yet there are billions of lines of code that still rely on the technology and so companies are stranded.

As for .NET...each framework is effectively its own beast. If the design concept is the same as Java's, Microsoft's idea of production support is not.