Which programming language is for me?

[sourceninja]

I just noticed that the netbackup client installs it's own version of java on everything it touches.

 

[Nothinman]

I just noticed that the netbackup client installs it's own version of java on everything it touches.

I'd be willing to bet that's more common than people like Shilohen think, it's just that they're not looking for it so they don't notice.

AFAIK you can't install a copy of a .Net runtime into a particular directory, it just spews itself across your system drive, so doing something like that isn't even an option. Which is mostly a good thing.

 

[Markbnj]

I'd be willing to bet that's more common than people like Shilohen think, it's just that they're not looking for it so they don't notice.

AFAIK you can't install a copy of a .Net runtime into a particular directory, it just spews itself across your system drive, so doing something like that isn't even an option. Which is mostly a good thing.

You can mess with that more than people think, although there is almost never a reason to. You could ship different versions of any of the framework DLLs and load them from a custom location, and you can also host a different version of the CLR and run your programs on that. The fact that people don't probably reflects that they don't have to more than anything else.

 

[Nothinman]

You can mess with that more than people think, although there is almost never a reason to. You could ship different versions of any of the framework DLLs and load them from a custom location, and you can also host a different version of the CLR and run your programs on that. The fact that people don't probably reflects that they don't have to more than anything else.

Or the fact that it's a lot more work. A JRE is pretty self-contained so all you need is to put it somewhere and run that javaws executable. I'm sure shipping your own NRE would be a huge PITA.

 

[DivideBYZero]

My company (BMC Software) has quite a few Java based app consoles that require specific Java versions. Sometimes you can get away with a newer build, but sometimes you won't.

I've just been at a customer with a custom ERP solution with a Java interface and it required JRE 1.4 level 14,15 or 16 and NOTHING else!

 

[degibson]

My company (BMC Software) has quite a few Java based app consoles that require specific Java versions. Sometimes you can get away with a newer build, but sometimes you won't.

I've just been at a customer with a custom ERP solution with a Java interface and it required JRE 1.4 level 14,15 or 16 and NOTHING else!

My JRE is only 77 MB. That doesn't seem like a prohibitive size for distribution, except on a restricted platform like a phone (or something). Hell, if you're selling software on a CD, that's only 1/10th of your space. You can download 77 MB in about 60 seconds on broadband.

In fact, I wish all Java apps would ship with their own VMs, so I wouldn't have to deal with the occasional version mismatch or the initial JVM install.

 

[Nothinman]

My JRE is only 77 MB. That doesn't seem like a prohibitive size for distribution, except on a restricted platform like a phone (or something). Hell, if you're selling software on a CD, that's only 1/10th of your space. You can download 77 MB in about 60 seconds on broadband.

In fact, I wish all Java apps would ship with their own VMs, so I wouldn't have to deal with the occasional version mismatch or the initial JVM install.

Fuck that. An RE is just like any other shared library and should be maintained separately. Any app that ships a common dependency is retarded and should be avoided at all costs.

If Sun/Oracle can't maintain compatibility with older releases their software will hopefully die out and only those unlucky few will even remember it exists, like BDE.

MS has already done infinitely better with .Net, as much as it pains me to say it. Sun missed their chance and it's all their own fault.

 

[degibson]

If Sun/Oracle can't maintain compatibility with older releases their software will hopefully die out and only those unlucky few will even remember it exists, like BDE.

I believe Microsoft has shown that, given enough gall, back-compatibility with old software can be "finessed."

 

[Markbnj]

I believe Microsoft has shown that, given enough gall, back-compatibility with old software can be "finessed."

I still have VGA demos I wrote in C++ in the late 80's which run on Windows 7, so I'd say that's some pretty successful finessing 🙂.

 

[degibson]

I still have VGA demos I wrote in C++ in the late 80's which run on Windows 7, so I'd say that's some pretty successful finessing 🙂.

Ah, if only I could get all of my old games to run natively. My nostalgia for them is powerful indeed. Thank goodness for dosbox!

 

[Nothinman]

I still have VGA demos I wrote in C++ in the late 80's which run on Windows 7, so I'd say that's some pretty successful finessing 🙂.

Yea, with as much shit as MS gets from people they really do well in the compatibility department. The duct tape that is things like WinSxS are ugly from a design perspective, but they work pretty well.

 

[Markbnj]

Yea, with as much shit as MS gets from people they really do well in the compatibility department. The duct tape that is things like WinSxS are ugly from a design perspective, but they work pretty well.

It's all part of the same big picture, imo. They had a huge install base, which meant they had to maintain backward compatibility or quadruple their support costs, and that meant as time went by some things got pretty hacked up. But the result is that probably 90%+ of the non-game software I owned from 1985 forward would run through Windows XP SP3. I think it probably dropped to 75% or so after Vista.

Degibson: my example is a little misleading, because although some of those demos wrote VGA hardware ports to set display modes and write frame buffers, for example, they were pretty narrow and linear pieces of software. Games are a lot more troubling, especially in the i/o and timing departments (I would say the basic graphics would probably still work for most of them if they could handle running at the speed of modern processors). Most of my pre-XP, pre-DirectX titles won't run natively on Windows since Vista, and many were troublesome on XP.

 

[degibson]

...Games are a lot more troubling, especially in the i/o and timing departments (I would say the basic graphics would probably still work for most of them if they could handle running at the speed of modern processors). Most of my pre-XP, pre-DirectX titles won't run natively on Windows since Vista, and many were troublesome on XP.

I used to grouse about the spinloops myself, until I switched to DosBox. My current beef is the genera that runs too slow (or runs ugly) under emulation yet won't run at all without it, due to now-absent interfaces. Approximately ca 1997--the holdouts from DOS.

In fairness, I do have a great time playing "Castle Adventure" ca 1980 on my current machine, CPU scaled to about 1/3000th of its native speed.

 

[Train]

Lol reminds me of an old version of MechWarrior I had on a 286. It didnt have time-based processing, just went as fast as the CPU would let it.

Then I installed it on my brothers shiny new 486 and it was so fast it was almost unplayable.

 

[looseratlife]

The fact that virtually every Java app includes it's own version of the runtime is one and that if you update that runtime you've got at best a 50/50 chance of breaking the app is another. Java failed at the one thing they should've been concentrating on, compatibility. .Net has failed similarly, but not nearly as bad.

Heres another one.. IF your totally into competitions and stuff and your only objective is to solve some maths problem/situation problem programmtically(I know, its not a word but u can guess what I mean right ?) .net is totally not the way to go. Java has many inbuilt features which effectively reduce the amount of code.

Now the .net turn, you get .net framework with win 7 not java compiler.

 

[Nothinman]

Heres another one.. IF your totally into competitions and stuff and your only objective is to solve some maths problem/situation problem programmtically(I know, its not a word but u can guess what I mean right ?) .net is totally not the way to go. Java has many inbuilt features which effectively reduce the amount of code.

Now the .net turn, you get .net framework with win 7 not java compiler.

Even if that's true, I see nothing in the OP that suggests he's looking for anything that would require specialized math libraries.

 

[looseratlife]

Even if that's true, I see nothing in the OP that suggests he's looking for anything that would require specialized math libraries.

Well my last sentence is just for that.
He was looking for a reason to ditch java and hop into the .net wagon and I gave him one.

 

[DT4K]

Being in a Windows environment, C# or VB.Net make perfect sense.
With a VBScript or VBA background, VB.Net would look more familiar.
But if I was starting from scratch, I'd go with C# just because I prefer the syntax and as was mentioned, there are more examples available on the web.

Since you are not a programmer, I would not suggest jumping into iPhone dev. I've been doing software development for almost 10 years now and I found iPhone development to be a bitch to learn. I've written two very basic apps and it took me more hours than I care to mention.