The majority of my undergraduate career was spent learning in Java. For the most part, I like Java a lot. I especially appreciate the merits and portability of the virtual machine approach. Of course, I've also had my complaints - most seemed to revolve around performance, Vectors and the lack of "boxing". Oh, and I do like semi-colons :)
Why does it seem that the Java camp is so negative and disdainful about all things not Java, especially anything that comes out of Redmond? Do they feel threatened by .NET? Or jealous? The standard write-off for .NET is that it's just a "Java rip-off".
SD Time's Java Watch column, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, is usually a good place to find such examples. Of course, Java is the focus of the column, but it seems Steven is always "defending" Java in some way or another. In the most recent column, Steven writes:
The biggest weakness with VS.NET, of course, is you can’t program in Java with it.
[Java Watch, SD Times]
I really can't tell if that's a compliment or what. Admittedly, that quote is taken somewhat out of context, and Steven does give VS.NET the credit it deserves. But if that is the biggest weakness of Visual Studio .NET, I'd say we have a pretty damned good product on our hands
(Personally, I can think of a few others. If VS.NET touches my HTML formatting one more time when I explicitly tell it not to, I'm throwing my monitor out the window)
Another example of Java bigotry is Carlos Perez' 101 Reasons Why Java is Better than C#. As others have pointed out, though, this list mostly fluff and lacks many reasonable technical reasons - and, more than anything else, is "101 reasons why I shouldn't learn new technology".
Then again, this isn't surprising. People learn a particular technology and become comfortable with it. I guess it can be rather difficult to let go.
But if you're not flexible and willing to learn, you're in trouble - and maybe you shouldn't be a technologist. That's the nature of the business. We all know the pace at which technology evolves.
I'm sure in 3-5 years there will be a platform out there that is superior to .NET. When that happens, is the .NET camp going to discount it simply because it's not .NET? I sure hope not.