Overview

Java

Stacks138.7K

Followers105.5K

Votes3.7K

.NET

Stacks10.3K

Followers5.9K

Votes1.9K

GitHub Stars21.7K

Forks4.9K

.NET vs Java: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between .NET and Java. Both .NET and Java are popular programming platforms used for building web applications, desktop applications, and enterprise systems. While they have some similarities, there are several important differences that set them apart.

Language Compatibility: .NET primarily uses C# as its main programming language, although it also supports other languages such as Visual Basic .NET and F#. On the other hand, Java has its own programming language called Java, which is widely used for developing applications in the Java ecosystem. This difference in language compatibility means that developers familiar with C# will feel more at home working with .NET, while those with experience in Java will prefer using Java.
Platform Independence: Java is designed with the principle of "write once, run anywhere" (WORA), which means that Java code can be executed on any platform that has a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). .NET, on the other hand, is more platform-dependent, as it requires the .NET runtime environment to be installed on the target machine. This platform independence gives Java an advantage in terms of portability and cross-platform compatibility.
Development Tools: Both .NET and Java have their own ecosystems of development tools. .NET has Visual Studio, an integrated development environment (IDE) that provides a rich set of features for .NET development. Java, on the other hand, has a range of IDEs to choose from, including Oracle's NetBeans, Eclipse, and JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA. The choice of development tools can influence the productivity and efficiency of developers working with each platform.
Open Source vs. Proprietary: While .NET started as a proprietary framework developed by Microsoft, it has now become open source with the introduction of .NET Core. This has opened up the framework to a larger community of developers and enabled cross-platform development. On the other hand, Java has been open source from the beginning and has a thriving open-source community. The open-source nature of Java has led to the development of numerous libraries and frameworks that extend its functionalities.
Performance: Both .NET and Java provide high-performance execution environments, but they have different approaches to achieving performance. Java uses a just-in-time (JIT) compiler, which converts Java bytecode into native code at runtime. .NET, on the other hand, uses a combination of just-in-time (JIT) compilation and ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation. This difference in compilation strategies can have an impact on the performance of applications developed in each platform.
Community Support: Java has a larger and more established community compared to .NET. It has been around longer, and as a result, it has a vast number of resources, forums, and libraries available for developers. The open-source nature of Java has also contributed to its strong community support. While .NET has a growing community and is gaining popularity, it still has a smaller community compared to Java.

In summary, .NET and Java have key differences in language compatibility, platform independence, development tools, open-source status, performance, and community support. These differences can influence the choice of programming platform depending on the specific requirements and preferences of developers and organizations.

Advice on Java, .NET

Erik

Chief Architect at LiveTiles

May 18, 2020

Decided

C# and .Net were obvious choices for us at LiveTiles given our investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. It enabled us to harness of the .Net framework to build ASP.Net MVC, WebAPI, and Serverless applications very easily. Coupled with the high productivity of Visual Studio, it's the native tongue of Microsoft technology.

613k views613k

Comments

Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

175k views175k

Comments

Ido

Mar 6, 2020

Decided

When developing a new blockchain, we as a team chose Go lang over Java and other candidates, due to Go being (a) natively suited to concurrency - there are primitives in the language itself (goroutines, channels) that really help with reasoning about concurrency (b) super fast - build time, running, testing are all much faster that Java, this gives a far superior developer experience (c) shorter and stricter than Java - code is much shorter (less verbose), and there is usually one good way to do things, and even the code formatter that is bundled with Go is very opinionated - over a short time this makes reading other people's code far smoother than having to deal with different styles.

You should be aware that Go presently (v1.13) lacks Generics.

267k views267k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Java	.NET
Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!	.NET is a general purpose development platform. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build native applications for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and more.
-	Multiple languages: You can write .NET apps in C#, F#, or Visual Basic.; Cross Platform: Whether you're working in C#, F#, or Visual Basic, your code will run natively on any compatible OS.; Consistent API & Libraries: To extend functionality, Microsoft and others maintain a healthy package ecosystem built on .NET Standard.; Application models for web, mobile, games and more: You can build many types of apps with .NET. Some are cross-platform, and some target a specific OS or .NET implementation.; Choose your tools: The Visual Studio product family provides a great .NET development experience on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Or if you prefer, there are .NET command line tools and plugins.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 21.7K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 4.9K
Stacks 138.7K	Stacks 10.3K
Followers 105.5K	Followers 5.9K
Votes 3.7K	Votes 1.9K
Pros & Cons
Pros 607 Great libraries 446 Widely used 401 Excellent tooling 396 Huge amount of documentation available 334 Large pool of developers available Cons 33 Verbosity 27 NullpointerException 17 Nightmare to Write 16 Overcomplexity is praised in community culture 12 Boiler plate code	Pros 273 Tight integration with visual studio 262 Stable code 191 Great community 184 Reliable and strongly typed server side language. 141 Microsoft Cons 13 C# 12 Too expensive to deploy and maintain 8 Microsoft itself 8 Microsoft dependable systems 5 Hard learning curve
Integrations
Spring	C# Microsoft Azure F# Xamarin Visual Basic

What are some alternatives to Java, .NET?

Node.js

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

Rails

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.