[Pdx-pm] OT? Java .Net C# unhyped info?

[Phil Tomson]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Austin Schutz wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 03:29:21PM -0700, Eric Wilhelm wrote:
> > Some might say this is off-topic.  I'm trying to find honest 
> > introductory information about these overly hyped technologies that 
> > isn't on a Sun/MS billboard or in the context of "why these are 
> > stupid."
> > 
> > Maybe my question is whether they are worth learning or how much is 
> > important to know.  I've seen a hacker or two say that the buffoon will 
> > shoot himself in the foot anyway, and have been turned-off by the 
> > buzzwords that are sprinkled throughout the introductory material on 
> > the other side.  So, it occurred to me that I may have never read any 
> > info that wasn't either hyping or dumping-on.
> > 
> > Any references or thoughts from impartial observers?  (not that I expect 
> > a lot of them to be hanging out here, more a "surely you've heard of 
> > one or two" question.)
> > 
> 
> 	I would never call myself impartial, but I would take the time
> to familiarize yourself with at least one. If you lean more toward Unix
> development, go the java route. If you want to use the Microsoft environment
> go for .Net/C#.
> 	Which one is your next employer going to want you to be familiar
> with?
> 
> 	Language wise, Java and C# seem pretty similar to me. If you are
> familiar with Python they shouldn't be that hard to learn. There's even
> a Java implementation of Python.

Caveat: It's been 7+ years since I did any Java. At the time I tried it 
for a while and liked it, but in the end I decided that C++ was a 
better fit for what I was doing performance-wise. Nowdays if I need 
performance C++ is still my choice as there have been a lot of 
advancements in the template space and Boost has become a very usable 
library.  Sometimes I'll use a mixture of C++ and Ruby: C++ for the fast 
bits (10 to 20% of the code) and Ruby for everything else (80 to 90%).

I've thought about learning C# lately as I've heard that they're getting 
nice things like lambdas (any movement towards this in the Java space?).  
Also, you can do C# programming on Mono so you don't need to run Windows 
or have Visual Studio to learn it.  It's probably not a bad idea to learn 
some of both as a lot of jobs require one or the other.

However, perhaps we should ask the OP what he's planning to do?  If he's 
doing web development perhaps he should have a look at RubyOnRails (which 
some would also consider hyped, but at least it's grass-roots hype as 
opposed to corporate hype :) 

Phil