.NET

what is the difference between .Net and JAVA...?

The biggest difference between Java and .NET is the basic philosophy behind the languages. Java is a programming language designed to be run on many different platforms, and so uses a common language which has to be compiled and run on different platforms (eg. windows, mac and linux). Microsoft, with their offering of .NET, takes on a different approach, by allowing you to program in any language you choose, but has compilers for many different languages that generates a platform specific code (i.e. Microsoft or Windows). Therefore, Java can be used to write programs for many different operating systems, and .NET can be used to make any programming language into a Windows program. This is all based on the original design goals of the programming language, and has both advantages and disadvantages over each other. For example, .NET would be good for integrating legacy code from different languages into a working program, when you don't want to re-write each piece of code into the same programming language. Both .NET and Java are otherwise object-oriented programming languages, with their obvious syntax differences.

Hi Madev,

Differences between .Net and Java include
Java is from Sun, .Net is from Microsoft
Java is a language plus a runtime, .Net is a runtime framework that supports multiple languages, Visual Basic and C# (the .Net language most similar to Java) among them.
C# is very similar to Java but a few years younger, and a bit nicer in some respects - it has a slightly simpler syntax for some common constructs.
Java is more platform independent, it runs on several operating systems including Windows, Mac and Linux. .Net is primarily for Windows. Although the open source project Mono is developing a multi-platform runtime for .Net, so this is less of an issue than it used to be.
.Net has a more integrated development environment, as the IDE, runtime and server all come from Microsoft as a standard package, while Java is based on third-party tool and server providers. It used to be the case that the .Net development environment was clearly superior, but the difference is smaller these days.
It can be argued that Java gives more flexibility, as there are more server- and IDE-providers to choose from, at the cost of some extra overhead for the developer to get the different pieces to work together.



Functionality wise, there is not a lot of difference between the two, at least not when used to develop web applications.

For desktop applications, .Net naturally has an edge in Windows integration.

The biggest difference between Java and .NET is the basic philosophy behind the languages. Java is a programming language designed to be run on many different platforms, and so uses a common language which has to be compiled and run on different platforms (eg. windows, mac and linux). Microsoft
, with their offering of .NET, takes on a different approach, by allowing you to program in any language you choose, but has compilers for many different languages that generates a platform specific code (i.e. Microsoft or Windows). Therefore, Java can be used to write programs for many different operating systems, and .NET can be used to make any programming language into a Windows program. This is all based on the original design goals of the programming language, and has both advantages and disadvantages over each other. For example, .NET would be good for integrating legacy code from different languages into a working program, when you don't want to re-write each piece of code into the same programming language. Both .NET and Java are otherwise object-oriented programming languages, with their obvious syntax differences.