Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could point me to a resource or two that objectively looks at the pros and cons of developing a web based app either in Microsoft/ASP or Unix/Java? Assuming similar levels of developer skills no matter what the environment.



Many of the users will be behind the corporate firewall with locked down systems so it will be vital that the user front end runs in a standard browser and not need any special software, I don't put the Java runtime into that category - it seems to be ubiquitous these days, but ActiveX etc is definately out.



Cheers, Peter

Peter,

I am not a fan of Unix or Java for a number of reasons.  Especially as a .NET developer it would really "tie your hands" in developing an application in Java/Unix and make your work far more involved.  I can get into a rather lengthy discussion on this, but it is always my recommendation to develop web applications using ASP.NET.  Now within this development we may use a bit of JavaScript and AJAX to get what we want.  But I agree that activeX is not a direction that you would want to travel unless you are going to use Silverlight.  Silverlight is a great platform as well, but is not necessary to produce a full and robust application with ASP.NET. 

Peter,



This turned into a long post. I hope it helps you make the right decision for you and your project(s).



When I realized I needed to upgrade my skills, I evaluated mainly Java and .NET. I chose .NET. Here are some of my reasons:



1. The Java tool stack is huge. There are always many ways to get something done, tailored to different needs. Unfortunately, this means you have to essentially evaluate every bloody thing you do, so you aren't using the wrong tool. The learning curve is huge. .NET tends to have fewer choices. The choices tend to be middle of the road, making it harder to fubar your app with a wrong tool choice. Java zealots use this as a strong case for Java. You can really architect a great solution because Java provices you choices, tool options, yada, yada....they already know the stack, so they have already paid the price...I haven't. I actually needed to build an app sometime before I die and I would like to spend a significant amount of the time I have left with my family (and I have a while left ).

2. Java is slow. This is actually highly dependent on the software design, but since I'd be a beginner, it appeared that a newbie like me would be able to build a more usable app via .NET than I'd be able to build via Java.

3. Java is expensive. Yeah, you can get zillions of tools, IDEs, etc. via open source. But in general, it takes longer to build a Java app than a .NET app. Somebody has to pay for that development time. And as already mentioned, there is time that must be spent learning the tool stack, testing tool stacks, testing the zillion possible server configurations. No thanks. I have an application to build and deploy. And you typically have to throw more hardware to get the desired performance.

4. ASP.NET provides platform independence were it counts. ASP.NET is sweet because the controls can be built to render for different browsers. I.e. while the ASP.NET site needs to run on MS servers, the users can choose their browser. My impression was that while this could be done with JSP, it was harder.

5. .NET is language independent. I believe there are more than 30 languages being used with the .NET platform. Boo (http://boo.codehaus.org/) sounds fun.

6. .NET has the option of being platform independent with Mono. The main disadvantage of .NET is vendor lock in. However, there are open source, platform independent options like Mono available if needed.

7. I found StrataFrame. The learning curve for me with either of these was pretty steep. When I found SF, .NET suddenly became doable. And it wasn't just the framework (there are about a million java frameworks). It was the community.

8. I can't stand coffee. Don't like coffee ice cream. Coffee flavored jelly bean are right out. Don't like the smell. Don't like the taste. Makes me jumpy but doesn't wake me up. Java just doesn't do it for me.



So, that's how I got here (though not doing much web dev, mostly WinForms). However, I did a google to see what I could find.



This is a long discussion, covering 7(!) years on the topic. Starts with a question as to why MIT chose .NET over java. Some good stuff in here.



http://philip.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000tcP



This is a might be an objective analysis of .NET vs. Java. Can't vouch for the source, might be a very MS oriented:



http://www.promoteware.com/Module/Article/ArticleView.aspx?id=10



This is a MS article on the subject....completely unbiased of course! However, it does provide some good info about how the two compare.



http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa478961.aspx



This is a Java centric article, from a Java conference.



http://www.theserverside.net/news/thread.tss?thread_id=32421



This one is a question posted about ASP.NET vs Java vs. Php. Not great but it gives a flavor of about 7 zillion other posts like it!



http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread18599.html#



Ran across this article about the start of ASP.NET...first prototype written in...wait for it...Java!



http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/30/asp_net_java_project_cool/



Likely you'll need to find a good java/jsp forum to get a better view of why Java rocks for web development...you'll likely only find reason NOT to use java here!

LOL...that's a GREAT reason!!!

Hi Guys,



Thanks for the responses.

Greg - again, I'm just in awe of the quality of your posts on this forum...



Cheers, Peter

Peter,



Thanks for the kind words. I hope it provided you some useful (and maybe fun) info related to this tough choice.

I would like to also add in to consider a wider view as well. When our company was in the middle of making this very decisions we ended up choosing .NET because I could reasonably cross-train and re-use my code base and employees from internal to external applications. The code-base was a huge consideration, if we would of chosen Java/Ruby/Python/??? for our web and then .NET/C++ (non .NET)/whatever, we would of had to duplicate tremendous amounts of code between our internal applications and our web-portal. Also having the possibility of reallocating an employee from web to internal or vice-versa to help out in a pinch seems like a good door to leave open (even though that employee would likely be less productive than normal, it would be a lot better than telling an employee to learn a new language and do something productive tomorrow).



We also threw in with .NET because it has all of Microsoft behind it, pushing it outward in every direction. I will throw a M$ rant just as quick and vicious as the next guy, but I will admit if you are looking to have a single solution for your servers, OS, database, application development, and web development and a common set of skills that will cross-over from one area to another, .NET is the only way to go. I know some people believe you can build Java applications that rival .NET windows apps, but I disagree. Java works good on the web but for application development it is too cumbersome, difficult, and slow to produce quality applications.



This was the best decision for us, however if you were only concerned about building a website and not having to balance internal and external projects, code reuse, etc. Java, Ruby, PHP, or another one of the languages/frameworks maybe a better solution.

Jason Seidell

Programmer/Analyst

Infinedi