Contest: C# vs. Java vs. Visual Basic

[Xav]

In terms of power, C# with .NET is the most powerful, presuming your user has the .NET Framework installed. For cross-platform, Java has a similar syntax, with other things the same, such as garbage collection.

[G_Morgan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xav In terms of power, C# with .NET is the most powerful, presuming your user has the .NET Framework installed. For cross-platform, Java has a similar syntax, with other things the same, such as garbage collection.

What's your definition of power?

C# has some interesting abstractions that Java doesn't have. You can acquire them (with interest) through Scala though and the Scala compiler manages to match Java for performance because of it's type inference system. Scala is one of these sane languages where typing is optional rather than being one or the other with nothing in between.

I've never seen any hard figures that .Net beats the JVM for performance. I have seen some very solid comparisons of JVM performance to C and C++. If .Net beats the JVM then it does something rather magical because in raw performance the JVM is pretty much as good as it can get for a virtual machine.

Where Java struggles is, as I mentioned, poor libraries that hinder performance. Swing is one example, running the entire GUI library through the JVM is not necessary to gain the portability benefits of Swing. Another is the old synchronised collections that run half as fast as the newer ones (ArrayList and Hashmap are twice as fast as Vector and Hashtable in general use). Also cold start time is poor because of bytecode validation that .Net does not do. The next JVM will have pre-compilation AFAIK so it may kill both the bytecode validation issue and the Swing performance problems.

The real problem with both is the predominance of over engineered frameworks and API's that are too complex for their own good. People aren't running from Java because the language itself sucks. Nor are they doing it because the JVM is poor. The real problem is things like J2EE with mountains of XML configuration files.

[Xav]

By power I mean getting the most work done with the least amount of code.

[G_Morgan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xav By power I mean getting the most work done with the least amount of code.

Then I agree. C# is better than the Java language. It has a host of nice features borrowed from functional programming that Java doesn't. Scala has all those features and more though so the .Net v JVM issue is a little different.

What we will see a few years from now on the JVM is that libraries will be written in Java but a very large section of people will use one of the new languages on the platform. JRuby is already more efficient than the standard Ruby implementation and might see a large uptake (especially since Netbeans happens to have top cl*** Ruby support now).

It's interesting that MS touted the multiple language nature of .Net which seems to be headed towards a state where C# and VB.Net are the only major languages (both being nearly identical. I'll wait to see what happens with F#). OTOH Sun Microsystems, who for an age had the 'one language, one VM' mode of thought, are moving the JVM into that space with 5/6 decent language implementations on there at this point. 2 or 3 of them being excellent.

[Chinmoy]

300 300 300 300

And, java simply rocks! Look at the amount of object orientation! It is simply better than c#. Also java is extremely secure and caters to a lot of areas...



The source is oreilly.

I feel so established now...lol.

[Jordan]

You only have the #135th post in this thread. You need to have post number 300 in this thread (not a total of 300 posts) to win the contest.

[G_Morgan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chinmoy And, java simply rocks! Look at the amount of object orientation! It is simply better than c#. Also java is extremely secure and caters to a lot of areas...

Java is no more object oriented than C# and certainly doesn't compare well to Ruby or Smalltalk (two purely object oriented languages) on this front.

[TcM]

Sorry, but what is that image comparing?

[chili5]

Yeah I'm not really sure what is that image saying either?

[revealer]

It's about the market share of each language.