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Comment by nv-vn | Hacker News Reader

I'm really not a fan of these kinds of blanket statements where you lump everything into "JVM" or "failure". The JVM is a good platform for performance, stability, etc. but it's not the only one. The .NET ecosystem is pretty high up there for performance (and gives you a bit more room for fine tuning) and it easily has some of the best support in the industry (both 1st and 3rd party). And we've all seen success stories with Node.JS, RoR, and all sorts of niche languages that probably wouldn't have happened with a different language (because of factors like needing to get up quick prototypes for startups or just the culture at those specific companies). There's no road that will "set you up for failure," so to speak. In reality, it comes down to what works for your team and your application, and a lot of times there's no clear-cut winner in those cases.

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.NET is a pretty strong contender and provides a lot of the benefits of Java, I agree. C# was ahead of Java language-wise for many years, though Java is catching up, and there are elements of the CLR and model that I'd prefer over Java, such as properties. I also recall the .NET assembly model being clearer than Java equivalents like classloader. await's pretty nice. It's all been focused around Windows though for years. (Random question: Do the concurrency concepts all work out on a platform with no IO completion ports? Is there a high quality .NET implementation using epoll?)

The open source community isn't there around .NET the way that it is around Java, however. Java's libraries are a big part of what make it so effective. Perhaps Microsoft's recent change in stance and decision to open source a lot of the toolchain will influence that, but it will be playing catchup for years. I see .NET as being an engineering coup from Microsoft with intrinsic value comparable to Java, while Java has that plus a large community and better cross-platform support.

When I work in Java, the wide availability of libraries and frameworks really helps. Take a look at the number of Apache projects written in Java: https://projects-old.apache.org/indexes/language.html#Java - many of those are very high quality and useful, and those are just the Apache ones.

As a side note, Kotlin does properties very much like C# - take a look at it the next time you're doing Java and have a choice in the language.

I see a trend of more community for .Net ( because of Microsoft's efforts) and less through Java ( because of Oracle's non-efforts)

I feel like the perception that Oracle isn't evolving Java is heavily parroted by people outside the ecosystem. From a Java developers perspective they have done far more in the last two releases than Sun did after 1.5.

I agree with you - generalizations are never a good thing. I did however, have negative experiences with .NET in the enterprise space. I worked in C# for a few years improving some web services for a Finance company. This was long before Java 7 even, so as a language C# 4.0 seemed amazing to me at the time. Lambdas, LINQ etc, - I was blown away. Microsoft ecosystem, however was not really wowing me in any way. There wasn't for example any sort of equivalent to JMS in Microsoft land - MSMQ was simply pathetic in terms of functionality. Apache Active MQ for .NET wasn't really mature at that point. Then, there is the Microsoft SQL server which, again is not really good at any particular thing.

Agreed, it's crazy that there are engineers in this world that can make blanket statements like this, especially on a site like HN.

There are a lot of great languages/frameworks, and it depends on the needs you have and your team.

(I'm so fatigued by this view I hear so regularly expressed in web dev that "X is the solution to everything" - no, it's very rarely the case)

I'm more fatigued by the constant "use the right tool for the job" - impossible to argue with, and utterly useless advice for actually making decisions. Some tools really are better than others, and there is a lot of value in standardizing on a single platform. http://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/java-for-everything...

Sure, but let's have that debate, and set down a philosophy around that. What you're arguing is not that Java is everything - but that a polyglot stack has dangers, that certain tools are often unobjectably better than others, and that we shouldn't sugar coat that. I agree, as would many of our friends in the space.

But if you're saying that everyone who is in Javascript, Ruby, Python, Go, PHP (and others) should all refactor into Java because it's the one and only ideal web backend in 2016 (or design new apps exclusively in Java) - I could pick a 1000 holes in that argument. The original comment I reacted to was:

> If you're not picking the JVM in 2016 to build your core services and web applications then you're making a mistake

My apologies if this comes across negatively (which I don't intend, as this is a respectful debate among people who care deeply about their craft) - but I'm just not convinced that you're really a full supporter of the original commenter. Your blog seems to show a fair degree of pragmatism (you consider other languages/frameworks, might use them, are ok if your friends are not using Java). I'm totally fine with "I think the majority of people should use Java" (I don't fully agree with that, but in a world where many people knew that ecosystem, I think it's a great choice) - but the commenter went much further. If s/he is looking to start a debate, then I'm fine; if that person would join any company and religiously uphold that viewpoint, I don't think they'd be the right person for many companies.

P.S. If I'm wrong, and if Java is the ecosystem that for the next few years the rules them all, I really want to make a Lord of the Rings-inspired meme about it

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