Abhishek Reddy — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 05:14:38 +0000

benf;216141 wrote: As for Ruby, this is just a web technology or am i wrong.

Ruby is a general purpose language, like Java, C#, Python, etc. Rails is a web framework for Ruby.

benf;216141 wrote: does it have some low level features like java and .NET?

I don't think there's much in Java or .Net that is low level. In fact, they are mainly good because of high level features.

Ruby

benf — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:19:06 +0000

Thanks for all the feed back, and no my friends name is not bryan.
As for Ruby, this is just a web technology or am i wrong. I have not read much about it, but does it have some low level features like java and .NET?

JeevesBond — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 08:22:02 +0000

benf wrote: I have a friend who is a VB.NET developer. He swears by it, always tries to convince me that it is the best development environment to learn.

This is just a shot in the dark, but your friends name isn't Bryan by any chance?

Abhishek Reddy — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:37:45 +0000

benf wrote: I have a friend who is a VB.NET developer. He swears by it, always tries to convince me that it is the best development environment to learn.

However, tutors at college swear by Java

I would be wary of people who swear by a given technology, as it is often for all the wrong reasons.

People are prone to misplacing credit (or blame) upon a technology if they happened to be using it during a critical period. For example, I know someone who swears by PHP because they first learned loops and iteration (and so on) in PHP. Another swears by C++ because they wrote their first 3D game in C++. Neither seriously tried another language since.

Tutors and teachers have all sorts of reasons to lie as well; one way to think of it is, "education is building knowledge with a scaffolding of falsehoods".

Next time someone recommends a technology they swear by, ask them what its deficiencies are, or what jobs it's ill-suited for, and see if they're being pragmatic or dogmatic.

As for Java vs .Net, here are some quick thoughts:

maintainability - As far as I can tell, there's not much difference. The dominant factor is the developer who writes and documents the code.
functionality - The .Net API is, perhaps unavoidably, largely a clone of Java's, which is probably Java's best feature anyway. I think Java's API is somewhat more mature, and better organised and documented. (Does functionality include other language features?)
portability - Hard to say. Java VMs appear on several platforms, but they're not all the same environment (SE, ME, EE). I'm not aware of as many compatible implementations of .Net. However, the .Net runtime can host a variety of languages, of which some may be portable, to varying extents, with other implementations for the language.
availability - In the sense of portability? See above. In the sense of distribution? See below.
price - and distribution - See Jeeves's post.

Other, possibly more important, factors to consider: development cost or time; features; expressiveness; tools, documentation and community; quality of specification and implementation (including security and efficiency).

I haven't mentioned PHP because I think it tends to be much worse than Java and .Net on the first three counts. It's probably not a fair comparison anyway as PHP wasn't intended to be a general-purpose language, and Java/.Net weren't designed for web-specific jobs -- you would have to consider Java/.Net web libraries, frameworks and extensions as well.

In the end, I voted for Java for the same reason as Jeeves did. I think it's marginally better than .Net technically, but I'm still not a great fan. I would prefer other technologies (Lisp, Ruby, Haskell) over all of the above if available.

Hope that helps.

benf — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 01:25:57 +0000

Oh yes ruby, bought a book on it - "agile web development with ruby on rails" not yet delved into, however it will come!

JeevesBond — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:30:42 +0000

benf wrote: I have a friend who is a VB.NET developer. He swears by it, always tries to convince me that it is the best development environment to learn.

I too know people who are .NET developers and hate it with a passion. I was a full-time ASP/VB6 developer at one point, if that's anything to go by then .NET is probably awful. Although I have never really used .NET, so can't comment. It much depends upon your point-of-view and what you're trying to do.

I am unable to use .NET because it is encumbered with software idea patents, which are being used against the Free software community by the current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. See the Slashdot story: Ballmer Repeats Threats Against Linux, and my associated comment for details. Basically I'll never support a company that is profiteering from the hard work of others, particularly when the original authors of much Free software don't even get paid for their work!

So, with me it's a moral choice of not supporting monopolistic corporates who feel they have to resort to FUD (see part about SCO at the bottom of that article), instead of producing a product that is technically superior. That said, the sheer amount of FUD spewing from Redmond shows Microsoft are living in mortal fear that Free software might make them irrelevant. According to the FUD forecast, the next attack will be: 'Linux is Communist!' along with: 'Linux is anti-American!' Watch out for those, it'll be quite funny.

That aside, I voted for Java as it's Free (as in freedom--finally), it's cross-platform, it's more popular (apparently), it's certainly more secure than PHP, and there are good Free IDE's available that support it.

For most Web stuff I use PHP, mainly because my favourite CMS is written in that language. As is this forum software.

Most freely available Web applications use PHP, but I believe by your metrics Java is still the winner. You are missing Ruby on Rails, that's a fast growing language/framework for Web applications.