Contest: C# vs. Java vs. Visual Basic

[Matt]

I have heard Java referred to as C++--
But really, I have tried Java (+ NetBeans) and Visual Basic. I didn't stay with either long enough to tell much. Java seems really messy, unless you are incredibly skilled with it, or have had previous experience with a lower level language. Visual Basic seems like the classic over-built Microsoft app, but it has several nice features (like compiling into an install file, among others). If I had to choose one, I would choose VB, but I'm using LInux now anyway, so forget that. I use Python (with PyGTK + Glade), and like it a lot.

[G_Morgan]

Originally Posted by Meka][Meka

i've used all 3 languages, java is no way first place, and open source is not always good... like linux, linux is open source, it is always being beat by coders, as in exploited,

Since when? There is zero proof of that assertion. The only recent claims were WRT Vista and RHEL and basically compared every package in RHEL (including several office suites, countless servers, endless arrays of compilers) and even then Vista didn't look that much better. An informed viewer would state that the entire FOSS environment, including all the applications and servers, has only slightly more exploits that Windows Vista alone. Independent code audits have lauded FOSS code and ****ed proprietary code on countless occassions, the only people who believe differently are MS and their supporters.

Anyway. I don't understand the problems people are having with Java? Every program I've ever written in it has run properly on any Sun VM with a greater version number than the one I used in development. Backwards compatibility is good. There were originally problems with AWT which is why everyone uses Swing these days (which has improved dramatically the last 2 years). I've never had any difficulty getting a development environment setup either (I mean, add javac to your path?). If you must use an IDE then Netbeans 6 is looking fantastic and even has a GUI editor for those who can be bothered unwrangling the code mess that they tend to create (I can't, it's quicker to do it by hand and it does what I want). I certainly don't see much difference between it and C# (other than closures and soon lambda's, both of which are of limited real use. Nice features but not 99% use case features).

Personally I dislike them both. Classes are for datatypes and GUI's, when I've got a something that essentially reads y = f(x) I want to use a function because it is a function. Static class members are just an unnecessary piece of semantic gibberish which get in the way. This is why C++ still fits the bill for me. Once you've got a GC set up for C++ then it has dealt with the major advantage of the managed environments and still has plenty of it's own advantages.

D looks promising though, a much cleaner C++. Native code, GC as default, multi paradigm. The only language problem is an idiotic decision where overloading certain operators cannot return references, this will be fixed in the next version though. Other than that it needs a good unit test framework and support for refactoring, profiling, syntax highlighting and code completion. The normal stuff vital for development.

[Anirban Chakraborty]

Originally Posted by Matt

I have heard Java referred to as C++--
But really, I have tried Java (+ NetBeans) and Visual Basic. I didn't stay with either long enough to tell much. Java seems really messy, unless you are incredibly skilled with it, or have had previous experience with a lower level language. Visual Basic seems like the classic over-built Microsoft app, but it has several nice features (like compiling into an install file, among others). If I had to choose one, I would choose VB, but I'm using LInux now anyway, so forget that. I use Python (with PyGTK + Glade), and like it a lot.

As matt said java codes can be messy. Code in any other language can be messy too. And what does lower level language refer to. Any other language will be lower level. Java provides tonnes of library functions that makes it the most useful language I have seen till now.

[John]

Java is far from being a "low level" programming language.

Wiki:
In computer science, a low-level programming language is a language that provides little or no abstraction from a computer's microprocessor. The word "low" does not imply that the language is inferior to high-level programming languages but rather refers to the small or nonexistent amount of abstraction between the language and machine language; because of this, low-level languages are sometimes described as being "close to the hardware."

[Maurice_Z]

So in other words, Assembler will be Low-Level Programming language, because, as many people I know like to call it, you use it to "Program Processor", whereas C++, Java, VisualBasic, Basic, Python, C and other commonly used languages are High-Level Programming language, because you don't write direct instructions to processor, but work with series of predefined commands and variables?
Or something like that, I guess.
I personally use neither C++ nor VB not even Java. I'm actually stick to BlitzMax, mainly because I don't plan to do other things than game making.

[v0id]

The low/high-level-thingy is very relative. Comparing C to Java, C will be low-level while Java will be high-level. Comparing C to Assembly, then C will be high-level while Assembly will be low-level. IMO the terms shouldn't be used if you aren't comparing with a small groups of programming languages.

[G_Morgan]

Well there's low and high level wrt how far from the processor you are and then there's low and high level wrt the level of abstraction you are working at. In the first case Java is very high level being on a VM, in the second case Java is in a similar boat to C and C++. It doesn't offer you any useful abstractions over C++ so isn't really higher level than it.

[oppo]

Wouldn't that definition mean that C#, Java and Visual Basic are all high-level languages? I think so. Java is better than the other two for two simple reasons: A) it does not require .NET B) it is portable.

[G_Morgan]

Originally Posted by oppo

Wouldn't that definition mean that C#, Java and Visual Basic are all high-level languages? I think so. Java is better than the other two for two simple reasons: A) it does not require .NET B) it is portable.

Well VB.Net runs on a VM but the original VB (before they made it C# with funny syntax) ran as native. Really it's all a bit silly, you can compile any language to any platform, there are native code Java compilers out there. It's just that high level has been associated with how close to the metal something runs because, traditionally, high level languages like Smalltalk or Lisp ran on VM's because portability was a goal. Now we have what amounts to a mid level language with GC tacked on in Java, it doesn't really offer anything over C++ other than GC (the next C++ standard will have GC, I'm ignoring larger portability because that's an issue of API's not languages).

I don't think of any of them as extremely high level because they don't provide many high level abstractions. C# is leaning in the right direction but tacking on weak forms of lambdas and closures isn't as useful as starting with them and building the platform around them.

Personally I'm looking forward to seeing some of the JVM research come to something. One of the things that holds me off the JVM is the difficulty in doing some interesting optimisations like tail calls. The current research seems to be leaning in this direction, making it easier to produce efficient functional languages on the JVM. When that happens I will probably spend more time on the Java platform*. It's really a bit silly that we've seen loads of attempts to port such languages to the JVM with little help from Sun while MS have had comparatively little interest but have been willing to modify the platform to allow these things to run smoothly.

*there are other issues. Personally I think Sun should separate the server side from the client side. Make a desktop JVM that skips some of the security checks that are needed at server side. Never know, we may achieve efficient native code interfacing then.

[RachelHelps]

So...with this posting, it doesn't matter if you are new like me? If I was the 300th post I still would get the $50 bucks?