Will .NET join Java on the doom train?
Summary: Java's travails have been well documented. Could .NET also suffer a similar fate?
For many years now, commentators have been giving up on Java or Java Enterprise Edition for dead as a legacy technology or platform. There have been plenty of articles written about its imminent demise. But it's still around, and by all indications, going strong.
What caught my attention in Niel McAllister's latest InfoWorld post was the assertion that the .NET Framework is also being sucked into the same alleged abyss into which Java is falling.
The infighting around Java Community Process has been making a lot of headlines as of late, considered by some as another nail in the Java coffin. Java on the wane? Old news.
But .NET on the wane? McAllister doesn't cite direct evidence of this, but says Microsoft's tendencies to pull back from technologies doesn't bode well for the framework:
"For a time, Microsoft funded development of IronPython and IronRuby, versions of two popular scripting languages that ran on the [Common Language Runtime]. But Microsoft has since backed away from these dynamic languages to focus on C# and Visual Basic, leaving IronPython and IronRuby developers in a lurch. Now some Microsoft shops are wondering whether other .Net technologies might soon meet the same fate. For several years, Microsoft has been encouraging developers to build UIs using Silverlight, a proprietary Microsoft technology for constructing rich Internet applications.... Yet for months now we've heard rumblings that Microsoft may be de-emphasizing Silverlight in favor of Web standards such as HTML5 and JavaScript.... How can enterprise developers be expected to view .Net as a strategic platform if Microsoft can't even get its own strategy straight?"
McAllister calls the two enterprise frameworks to be "lumbering technologies" in the age of cloud and lightweight scripting. Indeed, both Java EE and .NET came of age more than a decade ago, when there weren't as many options for securing ready-to-go plumbing that could support Web-friendly applications. So there's a healthy installed base that's been around for a few years. But there are now a lot of options for companies and developers. The big question is: how likely is a startup or new enterprise project likely to built on Java or .NET?
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Talkback
RE: Will .NET join Java on the doom train?
Of course they would never announce it to be "dead", just "forget" to supply any more updates to it beyond Windows 8.
HTML5 JS frontend / Java EE (or .NET) backend
Given my Unix heritage I prefer Java EE, but both can do most tasks. Java EE, via the JCP, is more complicated but also offers amazing power. It's ability to run on any OS, zero licensing cost option and superior scalability makes it very hard to beat.
MS IDE is better integrate for the script kiddies for their simple apps.
HTML5 looks to be performing the same API consolidation on the UI. Given it's cross platform support it's the obvious choice (demand is for access from a growing number of devices).
RE: Will .NET join Java on the doom train?
HTML5 bubble will bust like client side Java
MS' strange love affair with HTML
Building anything beyond simple apps with HTML / JavaScript, is such a mind numbing and highly inefficient process, it seems highly unlikely that MS will abandon .Net for the aforementioned technologies. Therefore MS appears to want to appeal to the tens of millions of HTML / JavaScript developers out there, to build Windows 8, optimized apps - for which I have to ask the question, "Why bother?" If these guys build apps specifically for Windows 8, they will be forgoing making their apps available on billions of machines. If the try to monetize their apps on Windows, they will be competing against superior apps built with much more capable .Net technology. If they try to build their apps for the web, and optimize it for Windows 8, where would be the Windows 8 optimization advantage when native apps would be so much more competitive than them? Therefore all this fussing over HTML apps on Windows 8 is largely a waste of time and resources - in my opinion.
There are obviously a number of people at MS who are truly enamored by HTML, and I just don't know why. HTML has caused the company so much grief over the years, yet the company still seems to be so in love with it. MS needs to focus on .Net, and allow HTML to go off and be supported by the web community. HTML has never loved MS, and never will. MS really needs to get over it.
This is sensationalist nonsense
We already know that Silverlight and with it .Net will run on Windows 8. Prophets of doom seem incapable of keeping-up with genuine developments in stories like this, and instead focus on popular sources of scaremongering and wild speculation.
RE: Will .NET join Java on the doom train?
Cross platform...
Probably 75% of my computing is still local and doesn't use the Internet or the Cloud.
Given the lack of connectivity on the road, especially when roaming, where the costs are simply too high to go online for more than a few seconds to retrieve e-mail and then process them locally, local applications with cloud based synchronisation (when a connection is available) still makes more sense.
The same is true for server side back ends. We mainly use Java here, but an MS shop will continue to use .Net and PHP, Ruby etc. shops will continue to use their tools of preference.
The statement about "drawing back," is open ended. Have they blocked the use of Iron... or are they just not actively helping the community develop them any more?
Maybe MS just consider that the Iron... languages are mature enough and they have enough community backing, that the momentum will keep rolling.
Dynamic scripting languages aren't MS's fort?. The two languages in question come from an open background, so it makes sense for them to stay in open community hands. It also lets MS concentrate on their core languages.
RE: Will .NET join Java on the doom train?
.Net has been running on ARM through .Net compact framework for years now. All they need to do is expanding the whole compact framework into full featured .Net framework.
In a way .Net is doing something Java promised to do, which is write once, works everywhere.
RE: Will .NET join Java on the doom train?
Apples and oranges
Agreed
Joe should say silverlight, not .net in his article.
RE: Will .NET join Java on the doom train?
Exactly. Poorly mis-directed article. .NET generates HTML. If anything, Silverlight is in question, not .NET
RE: Will .NET join Java on the doom train?
MS did abandon their classical "Visual Studio"
RE: Will .NET join Java on the doom train?
Abandoned VB? No, it evolved. That's like saying they abandoned 16-bit.
VB6, VBA is history
I believe MS is abandoning Access now. 64bit jet is nowhere to find.
Java's demise
Can't see how Javascript could be used for business application development without creating a mess. Current internal business applications that I've seen that use HTML4/Javascript tend to be very difficult to maintain and no fun to work with. Not sure how HTML5/<insert JS library here> changes all of that.
But, that does not mean things won't go the way of sloppy HTML5/Javascripting. The superior product does not always win. OS/2 was arguably a decade ahead of Windows, but Windows 3.X won the contest easily.
RE: Will .NET join Java on the doom train?
JS isn't hard to maintain if done right. The key there is applying the same things we apply to other languages to JS. Use a framework like JQuery, organize your javascript into .js files and not in your HTML. Use only events (no onclick=blah. Comment, and if you can don't roll your own components. Use the same indentation and commenting standards as the rest of your app. If you guys do these things the JS will be easy to maintain (like ours is).
Java Doomed? .NET Doomed? I think not!