[Pdx-pm] OT? Java .Net C# unhyped info?
Phil Tomson
ptkwt at aracnet.com
Thu Jul 14 17:50:12 PDT 2005
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
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