“It’s all luck, when you get kicked out of your college, your first job destination becomes your track” a friend of mine said, yes this is true in the reactive people’s world, however the great people who could proactively shape their future and destinations, who could sense what’s best for them, their abilities and their market best opportunities, would have some other opinions.
This still doesn’t put any of the two tracks in the lower block, on all levels java is paying better everywhere in the world, and it’s expected to be like that for a while, Microsoft wins in the developer communities’ domination, it’s like when a country wins a war and their people get into a deep poverty and their soldiers get killed, the country still wins but all what their people have is the pride. Microsoft won but their developers didn’t.
Are you a java developer or a .net developer? This question applies on more than eighty percent of the world’s current software developers, I think you already asked yourself at least once which one is the best for you, and if it’s really a first time choice or you can convert whenever you want or when the market wants, and how would this affect your career.
It’s becoming a culture that you can’t convert – or work on both – and the developers started to believe it because they have separate departments in their companies, without giving it a deep thought why and what makes it a first time choice, and when you work on this you can’t do that.
it’s all about knowledge, you can get your hands on .net for years and then convert to work on a java enterprise or vice versa as long as it puts you on the same development level and you have the potential and attitude to get yourself on this level, and on the other hand you do have your own wide and thoughtful reasons, you would see some resistance claming that this is considered as horizontal knowledge scalability or you can’t become a great developer that way, let’s step back and thoughtfully look into it, you work only on couple projects, don’t you? And you already an expert with everything you practiced on these java or .net projects, so there is no other way to do more, unless you do one of two. first, take your career to the next level (most probably would be an architect if you are desiring a technical step, or managing development projects or operations if you are desiring a business step). second, you develop your skills by self studying the corners of the technology you use, and this doesn’t count on your career path unless you apply it on an enterprise project. don’t you think so? so you are who you decide, being a great developer or not, your attitude and self-awareness are what makes your step on a solid stair.
I don’t think there is a big difference in both technologies, both do the same job with almost the same cost in the enterprise, check out this article, it has some good information about Java vs. .Net from the technology perspective.
let’s conclude this in the following, you make your choice, you can be powerful on anything, as long as you believe you are powerful inside.
July 11, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Interesting post. The fact is, it has only been “Java vs. .NET” for a relatively short time.
The key is to know how to program, how to design software, and how to really understand what you are doing. Most importantly, you need to be able to learn new things, because whichever path you take, even if you do not switch back and forth, most of what you know in terms of a specific language or technology will be irrelevant in 10 years.
I started out in languages like Assembler, FORTRAN, PL/1, etc. I have used a couple of dozen different languages professionally, and even more just from an investigative learning perspective. It no longer matters what the language is – the key is to know how to develop systems, and in almost all cases the choice of programmer language or environment is not that important.
July 12, 2008 at 1:57 pm
“it’s like when a country wins a war and their people get into a deep poverty and their soldiers get killed, the country still wins but all what their people have is the pride. Microsoft won but their developers didn’t.”
i love this part (Y)
July 13, 2008 at 8:05 am
yes, I agree with the part of MS that wins and their developers don’t.
but I see if you had one way path it would be better, I’ve a brother who did so and now he is doing good on his job, and went into the project management.
July 20, 2008 at 7:41 am
I think one shouldn’t be a “X” technology developer.A good one should be a software developer.As he will die if his tool dies or even becomes old enough (look for example , COBOL developers now).
, so you can change it whenever you need.
So i doesn’t matter which tool you use although as you said “your first job destination becomes your track” is true , but in the end it is a tool
July 29, 2008 at 3:00 am
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July 29, 2008 at 6:57 pm
this is a no brainer from my perspective. i have been spending the last 3 months full time refreshing my computer skill set. i have learned both .net and java. i have struggled with .net due to microsoft’s barrier’s of needing new hardware and a new operating system. i have successfully learned c# and parts of sql server. i was not able to continue with asp.net due to these barriers. vista did not help either when i bought a new laptop. due to frustration, i have started my learning with java. i see way more potential and career opps with this platform. i am able to run all CURRENT tools like eclipse (which is awesome), and ibm’s websphere and RAD 7. also, i have loaded up some pretty neat databases with my current and aged set up. this software did not cost me a dime and it runs both on my macs and windows. try that with microsoft and you see why many corporations/developers are moving to java. microsoft has buried themselves unfortunately. with the excitement of google’s new initiative with open social, android, and GWT, you wonder who has won this futuristic battle. oh. this all runs under javs and the newer languages. microsoft is desperately trying to catch up or hang on to what they have. java has become a huge juggernaut in terms of language and as a platform choice. many high profile sites are done in java including amazon, cnn, and many fortune 500s. websphere also appears to rule this roost as well. when you factor a 40+% market share for oracle, 18% for db2, and only 8% for sql server, you quickly realize how small microsoft is in the enterprise market. i do feel .net appears to play a support role where java/jee plays the lead for new projects. the cost, portability, and more seem to have microsoft scared on the development side. also, on the web front, google seems to have the excitement behind developers with the mentioned frameworks. they are also open source. i hope microsoft can catch up at some point but i am already long gone learning java since there are no barriers in learning this stuff. it is just complex but i am excited by it and see a definite future with java. anyhow, enough babbling but these are my neutral experiences.