Java or .Net

powerstar

Hi, I am looking for a bit of advice here.

In the present market which has more jobs Java or .Net and which would be better for longterm career.
As I am aware Java looks bit vast compare to .Net

Could you suggest any websites or blogs to detail about IT careers in Ireland.
Any advice welcome
Many thanks

wobbles-grogan

I would say java is more prevalent in industry at the moment. But who knows whats better long term, now that oracle are pulling the Strings.

CreepingDeath

Java is always going to be favoured in enterprise level systems.
Banks and financial institutions will already have invested a lot in application servers, teams running the servers, qa departments to roll out new systems etc.

Naikon

One major consideration. Java is portable across non microsoft platforms. Mono is NOT a proper substitute either. Being at the hands of Microsoft for bug fixes/support is not a plus point in my book.

Naikon

wobbles-grogan wrote: »

I would say java is more prevalent in industry at the moment. But who knows whats better long term, now that oracle are pulling the Strings.

Sadly, I suspect the Oracle will do some serious damage:( If Oracle had their way, they would probably patent the for loop. They are not about tech like Sun was. OpenSolaris is dead thanks to Oracle. Not bright.

kayos

CreepingDeath wrote: »

Java is always going to be favoured in enterprise level systems.
Banks and financial institutions will already have invested a lot in application servers, teams running the servers, qa departments to roll out new systems etc.

In all my years programming its always been in MS techs. Its also nearly been exclusively for enterprise level systems in Banks and Financial Services....

So ya Java has a following but .NET and other techs also have a following.

Naikon wrote: »

Sadly, I suspect the Oracle will do some serious damage:(

Can I list some possible changes Oracle are likely to bring to Java?

32 Char limit on object names.
An empty string is no longer an empty string but NULL.

powerstar

Thanks guys for u r replies.

As a beginner in the software I am unable to decide which language to learn?

I have basic knowledge in C and C++. I think I am not getting proper information or guidance about those two languages. When I checked topics of both languages Java looks like very extensive with j2ee, struts, hibernate where .net looks like bit easy, what do u think about this

and could u point me where I can find full info about these two

Thanks

kayos

powerstar wrote: »

As a beginner in the software I am unable to decide which language to learn?

Dont learn a language learn how to program. After that syntax is all you need to learn.

powerstar wrote: »

I have basic knowledge in C and C++. I think I am not getting proper information or guidance about those two languages. When I checked topics of both languages Java looks like very extensive with j2ee, struts, hibernate where .net looks like bit easy, what do u think about this

:eek:

struts is something to do with MVC if I remember right and MVC is built into .NET these days.

nHibernate is the .NET version of hibernate. Just like you have/had nAnt and nUnit etc. Most frameworks are available for both Java and .NET.

Nothing wrong in .NET looking easy. Heck its nearly a plus. Considering it covers pretty much everything you could want to do.

Market demand is the driving force and to be honest both Java and .NET are in software houses in Ireland. In terms of the availablity of jobs I would say Java prob wins out.

TrueDub

powerstar wrote: »

Thanks guys for u r replies.

As a beginner in the software I am unable to decide which language to learn?

I think you're going at this the wrong way. You should study the one you find more interesting - you'll study harder, become better at it and generally find it easier then to move to other languages/technologies.

Deciding which to learn by trying to predict the future is not an optimal way to determine your approach.

minotour

Antoher way to look at it:

Java will be more server side technology

.NET mostly client side application development

Which one interests you most? In most companies Java is engineering staff whereas .NET is Professional services. This would mean PS staff get to do more customer facing work which means travel, if that floats your boat then away you go.

NeverSayDie

powerstar wrote: »

As a beginner in the software I am unable to decide which language to learn?

It really doesn't matter, the main thing is that you learn how to program, and then learn how to develop software. Java and C# are very similar in most ways - it's not like you're comparing C for embedded development and C# for web apps, which would be two very different things to get into.

Either way, picking a technology as a beginner on the basis of jobs is pointless. You need to learn the basics, and you can do that perfectly well in either platform (or by sticking with C/C++, for that matter).

About the only points that spring to mind;
- if you use a Mac or a Linux PC, use Java. You can use .NET on those platforms through Mono, but Java will be an easier and more supported route.
- if you want to do some game development, .NET/C# may be a better choice, assuming you want to work with Windows and XBox - there's a pretty decent framework called XNA from Microsoft that will help with that.
- if you want to do fancy UIs for (Windows or web only), .NET may be worth a look for WPF and Silverlight. That's not a beginner's area though, it's fairly heavy stuff.

Other than that, there really isn't much to go on - both platforms have good free tools support, lots of online communities and resources, plenty of open source projects, etc. They're pretty similar in terms of general concepts, syntax, performance, etc. Just pick one and worry about learning the basics.

powerstar wrote: »

I have basic knowledge in C and C++. I think I am not getting proper information or guidance about those two languages. When I checked topics of both languages Java looks like very extensive with j2ee, struts, hibernate where .net looks like bit easy, what do u think about this

I think you've been misinformed alright. You're talking about libraries and frameworks for MVC web apps and ORM, not the platforms themselves. As has already been pointed out, those exist in wide variety for both platforms (sometimes as ports of Java ones, in the case of nHibernate, or as vendor supplied ones, in the case of ASP.NET MVC). .NET isn't "easy" anymore than Java is, or any software development is. Platforms like these provide you with things like garbage collectors and extensive libraries, but software development is anything but easy for a beginner, regardless of what you use.

Edit; to add to that list above, if you want to do mobile device development for Android gadgets, Java is the way to go. If you want to develop for these new Windows Phone thingies, .NET will do the job.

kayos

minotour wrote: »

Java will be more server side technology

.NET mostly client side application development

:eek:

NeverSayDie

minotour wrote: »

Antoher way to look at it:

Java will be more server side technology

.NET mostly client side application development

Which one interests you most? In most companies Java is engineering staff whereas .NET is Professional services. This would mean PS staff get to do more customer facing work which means travel, if that floats your boat then away you go.

That hasn't been my experience - my own work and most folks I know who use .NET has been in web apps, backend systems or app servers of various sorts. Most WindowsForms work I know of personally has been in internal tools development, and I've met no one yet using WPF for commerical work (more's the pity, some nice potential there it seems).

dvpower

powerstar wrote: »

Thanks guys for u r replies.

As a beginner in the software I am unable to decide which language to learn?

I have basic knowledge in C and C++. I think I am not getting proper information or guidance about those two languages. When I checked topics of both languages Java looks like very extensive with j2ee, struts, hibernate where .net looks like bit easy, what do u think about this

and could u point me where I can find full info about these two

Thanks

As a beginner you think .NET is a bit easy for you? You really are a beginner.;)

What's wrong with easy anyway? In programming, easy is good. It means you can use your left over brain power to design good solutions rather than fret over implementation details.

John_Mc

minotour wrote: »

Antoher way to look at it:

Java will be more server side technology

.NET mostly client side application development

No, you are totally wrong there. Both are server side.

Both can employ the same client side stuff with javascript, jQuery etc.

NeverSayDie

John_Mc wrote: »

No, you are totally wrong there. Both are server side.

Both can employ the same client side stuff with javascript, jQuery etc.

Indeed, not to mention tech like Swing/SWT/Java3D/JOGL or WinForms/WPF/XNA/Silverlight if you're doing heavier work on the client side.

amen

I can't believe some of the comments on this post

Java is always going to be favoured in enterprise level systems.
Banks and financial institutions will already have invested a lot in application servers, teams running the servers, qa departments to roll out new systems etc.

really I bet if you look most banks are running legacy systems on IBM mainframes using PL1, Cobol, CICS etc

The fancy front ends and desktop applications used in branches are just extracting the data and displaying.

Java will be more server side technology

.NET mostly client side application development

do you actually do any development in the real world?

in most work places one of two things happens. Company picks a language and codes extensively in that or they pick languages to match a projects requirements.

Either way it is far better to understand the concepts then the syntax. Once you under standing programming concepts you can learn the syntax of any other language.

Evil Phil

John_Mc wrote: »

No, you are totally wrong there. Both are server side.

Both can employ the same client side stuff with javascript, jQuery etc.

Maybe in the web world, maybe, if you decide to ignore applets and silverlight. Both can be used in a client/server role with fat clients sitting on the desktop.

John_Mc

Evil Phil wrote: »

Maybe in the web world, maybe, if you decide to ignore applets and silverlight. Both can be used in a client/server role with fat clients sitting on the desktop.

Yes, maybe. To describe .Net as a client side technology is plain wrong though

Evil Phil

John_Mc wrote: »

Yes, maybe. To describe .Net as a client side technology is plain wrong though

Really? I'm going to have ask you to back that up.

Although I tend to agree if you want to be pedenatic about this, .Net is a framework used to develop and execute software. So it is neither client or server side technology, however it sits comfortably in either role.

wobbles-grogan

John_Mc wrote: »

Yes, maybe. To describe .Net as a client side technology is plain wrong though

Why? It works pretty well under both roles imo. Just like java works well under both roles.

The OP had a specific question about which language would be better to learn, i think thread went a long way to confuse him :-)

As I said before, i would say Java is better to learn from, simply because i learnt with Java and it worked for me!

lil_lisa

I studied Java for the four years I was in college, now in my first job as a graduated student, I code in .NET every single day. I never once saw it or used it in college but it was pretty simple to pick up after studying the theory and structure of programming.

Webmonkey

Well if you know Java, then you're most of the way to C# .NET.

Kidchameleon

I hope Oracle get rid of Sun's insistence of using horrible K&R coding style...

if(var < 10) {
    var++;
}

Yuck

stevenmu

Naikon wrote: »

One major consideration. Java is portable across non microsoft platforms. Mono is NOT a proper substitute either. Being at the hands of Microsoft for bug fixes/support is not a plus point in my book.

Whatever you think about Microsoft and their other products and their philosophies as a company, their development tools and support have always been second to none.