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Comment by hota_mazi | Hacker News Reader

> Ironically, while Java was the original "write once, run anywhere" language, it never succeeded in that regard (e.g. browser applets were never popular). Ironically, I believe Javascript has.

It completely succeeded in that!

Java (well JVM) developers today can

- Write code on any of Windows/Linux/macOS

- Deploy that code on any of Windows/Linux/macOS

Not a lot of language/platforms can claim to this amount of success, let alone with such an amazing set of tools and ecosystem.

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C# (largely inspired by Java) run on even more platforms, because there is compiler/runtimes for mobile platform. It’s also the second biggest "entreprise" language, which fix a lot of Java pain points.

Technically, maybe.

In practice, how many developers write C# on a non Windows platform? I'd say a very, very tiny minority.

On the other hand, Java is being written on all platforms and being deployed on many as well.

> In practice, how many developers write C# on a non Windows platform? I'd say a very, very tiny minority.

Plenty do - think of deploying c# web services on Linux servers / containers.

GP said "write", not "deploy".

I write C# on Linux and I am basically the only person I know who does that.

Microsoft is pushing hard with it's .Net Core offerings and that effort is designed to make C# a more universal language.

Whether that effort pays off, only time will tell.

Actually C# runs on less platforms than Java, because it doesn't run on embedded devices, M2M, bluray players, military deployments, mainframes, Xerox and Ricoh copiers, SIM and chip based credit cards, and plenty of others devices, like even having a mobile OS based on an Java dialect.

There are for Java too. You can - obviously - run Java on Android, using either the native runtime or, less obviously, OpenJDK with JavaFX.

You can also compile JavaFX apps AOT for iOS! It's called Gluon Substrate, check it out.

Java really does run on a lot of stuff, even if OpenJDK itself may not.

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