Developing a Product: Java or .NET?

With the emergence for innumerable new technologies also comes a dilemma of choosing one for product and web development. Two of the most popular technologies include Java and .NET which is also the most popular technology when it comes to Microsoft development.

Choosing a technology involves considering not only the actual development space, but also factors like integration with databases, user apps, platforms used for development and the needs of your GUI. rnBoth Java and .NET are comprehensive technologies.

The .NET platform represents an array of technologies Microsoft has been increasingly promoting these technologies as alternatives to other existing platforms in order to attract developers to the Microsoft development platform. Many argue that .NET has evolved and has surpassed JAVA in many ways. It has helped boost developer productivity to a large extent and is also considered to be extremely developer friendly. Java, too, has been widely adopted and is not too far behind of .NET.

Why .NET?

1. Development in .Net is faster as compared to Java and it also has nicer features. LINQ is very good for databases and C# shines in the DSL area.
2. Most of the tools required for development are available at MSDN. This eliminates the need to evaluate tools and IDEs in advance.
3. The language integration in .NET is seamless. You can easily call methods from C# to VB.NET. On the other hand, Java makes it difficult to call Scala functions from Groovy.
4. Visual Studio .NET is an excellent development environment that provides a great DB, team extensions and commercial plug-ins.
5. SharePoint, Exchange and Office Products are very well integrated with .NET.
6. UI best practices are more consistent in .NET, than in Java.

Why Java?

1. Java offers better OR-support than .NET. The latter comes with Entity Framework, but it isn't as lean as JPA. Also, .NET seems to rely more on stored procedures whereas Java prefers to keep everything in domain objects outside the DB.
2. Framework / Libraries in Java are more structured and easily accessible.
3. Java offers remarkable with free connectors for SAP, AS400, files etc.
4. It is said to have great stability and no breaking changes. Java EE 5 and 6 platforms are backward compatible as well. So legacy J2EE 1.X app to a Java EE environment can be deployed and smoothly migrated.
5. Java developers swear by it community. Using .NET makes developers rely on MSDN.

Both technologies offer advantages that make them popular among developers. Also, new languages are continuously emerging on both platforms. The most popular ones are those pure object-oriented languages like Groovy on Java, representatives of the functional programming languages (F# on .NET, Scala and Clojure on Java). The good thing is that both platforms now include interpreters and compilers for existing languages, like Python and Ruby interpreters. This allows developers to choose the appropriate language for the problem they are trying to solve.

Depending on the needs of your product, you can decide between Java and .Net. .Net is a more comprehensive and secure platform which address most product requirements such as scalability, extensibility, backward compatibility and integrations.