“As thousands of programmers converge on San Francisco to attend Sun Microsystems’ JavaOne conference, which opens Monday, Microsoft is working in parallel to convince some of the flock to switch banners. That job falls to John Montgomery, who has the chore of trying to convince millions of Java developers to embrace Microsoft’s .Net technology.” Read the interview at News.com. “Java is drawing a rising number of businesses and software developers but still must overcome major obstacles before its long-term success is assured–including roadblocks from the very people who support the programming language.” Read the story at ZDNews.
Wooing Away Java Developers – Self-Inflicted Wounds May Scar Java
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I have been developing with both microsoft tools (VB) and Java, and i am soo glad i left VB for java.
Sure VB is easy and fast but what do you do when your software core dumps for reasons the you have no power or control over? What can you do? Post a trouble report to Microsoft – sit down and wait!
I totally agree.
I used to develop solely in VB. In 1996 I dumped VB and switched to Borland’s Delphi product.
Two years ago I made the switch to Java and have not looked back.
Java is a great development language, highly portable, and contrary to popular opinion, it is fast.
I have to agree with the two of you. Java is an excellent environment and an excellent language.
Programming for Windows is so inconsistant and Windows’ APIs are so absolutely shi**y (pardon the french) that you can’t help but love Java.
I almost fell in love with VB6. That was when I was making quick, one panel applications that did two or three things. After trying to develop a reasonable sized application, I can say I will never use VB out of choice. The limitations imposed by the language, as well as their syntax conventions are more than I care to deal with. Also, I’m surprised at how buggy the development environment is compared to Visual C++. I’d take Java over any language out there. Not that Java is perfect. It’s just the lesser of all evils for most of my programming tasks.