[Munish426]

Hi friends,
i' m just a newbie to C#. The main reason i opted for it is i'm very much interested in programming and according to experts, .NET is the future.
But i got a little confusion. .NEt is Microsoft product. So, i think the desktop and web applications designed in .NET will run only on machines equipped with MS windows.

Now, the problem is that the Linux is getting popular day by day, specially in comercial sector, coz of many gr8 features and better security and reliability.

Won't dat be a big set bak to .NET programmers..?? Won't it lead to decrease in demand of these programmers..??

[Mike0001]

Correct! Learn Java instead/as well!

[cheesepuff]

yes Java is very popular no matter where you are. go with that. its true that Linux is popular, but its not as popular as MAC, and even MAC is only about >10% of the popularity of what people use for a OS. so I'm not sure about Linux being the way to go. but i need to do more research before i could say for sure about anything.

[Munish426]

Is Java as good as C#..??
and is the applications built in OS independent..??

[Munish426]

I meant, are the applications built in Java, Operating System independent..??

I'm not having enough time to learn 2 or 3 languages. Can go for just 1. So, have to make a decision between Java or C#.

So, what should be the plan..??

[Carbon]

Java is OS independent, however I have no idea why people are recommending it.

C++ or standard C is more popular, also OS independent, gives you more control over memory allocation, and has many other advantages. While it's unfair to say Java is a "slower" language, most Java programs tend to be much slower and memory-hoggish than equivalent C++ applications: for example, uTorrent vs Azureus.

Here is a good summary of the differences.

If you're going to learn another OO language (considering C++ is pretty similar to C#), make it Python.

[dr john]

Programs written in C are not OS independant. The compiled program will be using OS specific calls to the processor. In fact I've just had a look at the link provided above, and it says that in the second sentance on portability!

The source code has to be compiled under each OS that a C program is intended to be run on. You can't take an executable you compiled on a MAC and run it under Windows.

As for the great surge of interest in Linux, got a web site? Look at the stats by operating systems.
Not got a web site? Then look at these figures from a hit counter used on tens of thousands of site
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2008/January/os.php - under 1%

[Cew27]

c# was created to try destroy java
if you mean os Dependant by os restricted then no java runs on almost all operating systems including mac, linux, windows, solaris and bsd
also java is getting faster and faster as it develops and is now faster than c and c++ in areas

[cheesepuff]

in areas. but what about over all? and if you wana talk areas, which of the major areas are we to compare?

[Cew27]

i cant remember, but i read an article a while back explaining that people think java will overtake c++ and c# in speed in the near future

[cheesepuff]

interesting... link?

[Cew27]

i cant remember try googling a bit
but to my limited knowledge java and c# are incredibly similar except java can run on more platforms and has a larger following
as much as i do like Microsoft they are thief's, they tried to steal java, change it and only implement their version in Internet explorer hence the 6 year court case that was finally put to rest
as a result microsoft dropped their thiefing and now in ie you need to double click on an applet or flash object to interact with it

[dr john]

Originally Posted by Cew27 i cant remember, but i read an article a while back explaining that people think java will overtake c++ and c# in speed in the near future

Not possible.

When you compile java you produce bytecode, which then has to be passed through any operating system's java interpreter before it runs. This intermediate program will always result in slower execution. This extra intermediate step is not required with C or C++ .

The use of the intermediate Java interpretor is how java achieves it's portabilty, as once an OS has an interpreter, it can run java code, independant of which OS was used to produce the code. But the price for this portablity is slower running code.

and the interpreter is probably written in C...

[Cew27]

indeed the jvm is written in c
i looked at some graphs last night and read a few articles and there were mixed results but overall java was faster (as in 6 out of 10 tests)
but prison break came on so i hastily ran downstairs to watch it

[Mike0001]

Originally Posted by dr john As for the great surge of interest in Linux, got a web site? Look at the stats by operating systems. Not got a web site? Then look at these figures from a hit counter used on tens of thousands of site http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2008/January/os.php - under 1%

What you need to do is look at the proportion of web sites running on some form of Unix: more like 99%!

Anyway, how many jobs are there in industry developing consumer programs as opposed to web applications?