Contest: C# vs. Java vs. Visual Basic

[HAL 9000]

C# is a great language but I don't like how close it's related M$.My friend got burned with Vb6 when they upgraded to .Net

I know it's open language but I just don't trust M$ with language standards and cross platform.If mono gets lots of support I would be happy until then I like Java :-)

[G_Morgan]

Originally Posted by HAL 9000

C# is a great language but I don't like how close it's related M$.My friend got burned with Vb6 when they upgraded to .Net

I know its open language but I just don't trust M$ with language standards and cross platform.If mono gets lots of support I would be happy until then I like Java :-)

Mono will never completely support the .NET API. They will only implement features that are one of:
1. Patent clean.
2. Have patents that can be worked around.
3. Have patents that can be invalidated by prior art.
4. Have patents that are covered by an indiscriminately redistributable patent license.

Now a fair amount of .NET falls into that category but there are guaranteed to be sections that are impossible simply by weight of software patent madness. MS (like most huge software companies) apply for lots of patents on things that make you sick. At least a few of them will stick even if the majority are utterly bogus.

If you want to use C# the language then Mono is fine. I believe the Mono API works fine on Windows so you can make cross platform apps via that route. Simply bundle the Mono libraries with your application. I would be cautious depending on the .NET libraries for cross platform though (just because the Mono team has a suitable defence for every patent they have 'infringed' doesn't mean they won't get a git of a judge).

[HAL 9000]

Originally Posted by G_Morgan

Mono will never completely support the .NET API. They will only implement features that are one of:
1. Patent clean.
2. Have patents that can be worked around.
3. Have patents that can be invalidated by prior art.
4. Have patents that are covered by an indiscriminately redistributable patent license.

Now a fair amount of .NET falls into that category but there are guaranteed to be sections that are impossible simply by weight of software patent madness. MS (like most huge software companies) apply for lots of patents on things that make you sick. At least a few of them will stick even if the majority are utterly bogus.

If you want to use C# the language then Mono is fine. I believe the Mono API works fine on Windows so you can make cross platform apps via that route. Simply bundle the Mono libraries with your application. I would be cautious depending on the .NET libraries for cross platform though (just because the Mono team has a suitable defence for every patent they have 'infringed' doesn't mean they won't get a git of a judge).

I know thats why I don't use C# I'm linux user :-)

But yes mono has all those patent stuff looming over it so I don't use .net in any form for my projects.To me Java and C# so close that I really don't see reason to change but I think C# is nice language.Since Java is slowly getting GPLed it makes it a safer language in my mind

[G_Morgan]

I think Mono is pretty patent clear (at least as patent clear as it gets). The worry is not what patents exist on the project, it's what they won't be able to implement in avoiding patents. Compatibility issues have killed more technologies that patent warfare ever will. The fear is that Mono could encourage greater acceptance of .NET in the short term while in the long term MS could kill it via extension. The last thing people invested in FOSS want is to promote a foreign technology that will undoubtedly be legally incompatible with FOSS in the future. The same issue applies to Silverlight IMHO (and I'm far more worried about Silverlight than any other part of the .NET stack).

My perspective on it is that Mono is fine if you want to use only FOSS technologies. Avoid stuff that is from MS and isn't in the ECMA standard and it's no worse and probably better than anything else in terms of patent threats. For example Gtk# is FOSS technology, there's no way MS can claim patents on that without threatening the rest of Gtk+. In that case no language is safe. It's why I'm not too concerned with Gnome having an increased Mono presence because all that stuff is using the Gnome API. It's not as if people are writing Linux applications using Winforms and ADO.NET and there is absolutely no legal threat from MS over the ECMA standardised parts.

Of course this means it is not a Java replacement. You can safely (as it gets) use the Java API on Linux, Windows or the Moon if you want. Of course none of this changes the fact that Swing is quite painfully slow to render. Not as bad as it used to be but there wouldn't be a javaGTK, javaQT, SWT and so on if people were happy with Swing. Of course if people separated their GUI's from their application logic it wouldn't matter too much since they could move from toolkit to toolkit at will.

[HAL 9000]

BTW how is SWT is it the same type of gui like WX that has native widgets?

[G_Morgan]

It's similar to WX yes but suffers from the same problem as both WX and AWT of subtle differences between different back ends. Definitely write once, debug everywhere. I think it has the highest quality of the multiple back end tool kits though. Mainly because it doesn't sacrifice functionality and falls back to Swing if it cannot implement a particular function in a tool kit.

I'm not sure how many back ends it has altogether. I've seen Win32, GTK+, Cocoa and Swing backends (yeap, SWT can run purely via Swing). There are probably a good deal more. I personally still use Swing even though it sucks. I just separate the logic into a controller class, create an interface for the GUI class (so the controller class has a common API to work to) and then you can move from tool kit to tool kit with impunity. I tend to write a GTK interface then and suffer Swing on Windows.

Back on C# v Java. If you really want some of the functional aspects of C# try out Scala. Scala has all the functional aspects of C#* and has a type inference system that means you need only provide types for a few variables (you can of course type every variable if you are one of those people) It can use Java objects with impunity and with some care you can go the other way and use Scala objects in Java.

*and more. The only C#ism it's missing is LINQ.

[marwex89]

Since I did not want to read 150 posts I will not debate, just post my view and add 1 post to the counter:

I prefer Java, but have never tried C#. Actually I prefer C++. VB is good for some things but can't compare to the others, I think.

Well, that's 1 closer to 300.. (or was it 600?)

[Xav]

300.

C# is great, you should give it a go. I love .NET. And with VB.NET, you get the same sort of power as with C#.

[marwex89]

Next year at school they might be teaching C# I hear. Maybe I'll take that class..

[chili5]

That's interesting, I've never heard of a school teaching C#. My school teaches C++, VB and Java but not C#.