www.hans-eric.com

I have been working on an article for a Swedish computer magazine. The article is to compare Java and C#.NET. In the writing process I have gone through lots of material, mostly articles found on the Internet.

So far the quality of those articles have been varied. Most of them are old and to some extent out of date. But there is one that is high quality: A Comparison of Microsoft’s C# programming language to Sun’s Java programming language, by Dare Obasanjo. This paper was originally written in 2001, but has been updated in 2007 to include the latest changes. If you are either a Java or a C# programmer and have little or no knowledge of the other, that article is all you need to catch up.

During my work on the article of my own, I have come to the conclusion that there are very few major differences between the two platforms. In fact, there is only one difference that makes a difference: Java supports multiple platforms, while .NET supports multiple languages.
In theory .NET could be as platform independent as Java, but the way the .NET Framework API is designed it makes a complete port difficult, although the mono project is definitely an interesting attempt.
On the other hand, in theory Java could be language agnostic too. And there has been attempts to target the Java Bytecode, but no successful ones. Sun doesn’t seem interested in these projects, and are not giving them any official support. The problem lies in the fact that Java Bytecode was not designed to support multiple languages, the main goal was for it to be compact and take little bandwidth when sent over a network. And Sun cannot make major changes to it’s bytecode due to backward compatibility issues.

The bottom line in my article research is this: C#.NET is the best platform for Windows based systems since it was in fact designed for it. Java on the other hand is the only option for systems that are targeting other operating systems.

I am a very busy man. I have a full time job as a project manager and software developer. In my spare time I am an freelance journalist, writing articles for a Swedish computer magazine. On top of that I am a caring father of two lovely children. Needless to say, spare time is scarce.

Both my job and my writing, as well as my wellbeing, require constant learning. The most convenient way for me to accomplish this is by reading. I love reading books. Tech-, popular science and fiction books – I devour them all.

The only problem is when to do it. I am always busy, either with work or with my family. But the optimizer in me has found a solution: I read while in the toilet. Tech-books are especially well suited for toilet-reading. They are usually well structured and have relatively short chapters. I tend to keep at least a couple of them lying within range.

Of course, I sometimes take unnecessary long time doing my needs, and sometimes my wife complains about it. But you know what they’re saying: a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.