Is there a real benefit of using J#?

Question

I just saw a comment of suggesting J#, and it made me wonder... is there a real, beneficial use of J# over Java? So, my feeling is that the only reason you would even consider using J# is that management has decreed that the company should jump on the Java bandwagon... and the .NET bandwagon. If you use J#, you are effectively losing the biggest benefit of picking Java... rich cross platform support. Sure there is Mono, but it's not as richly supported or as full featured right? I remember hearing Forms are not fully (perhaps at all) supported.

I'm not trying to bash .NET here, I'm just saying, if you are going to go the Microsoft route, why not just use C#? If you are going to go the Java route, why would J# enter the picture?

I'm hoping to find some real world cases here, so please especially respond if you've ACTUALLY used J# in a REAL project, and why.

Answer 1

J# is no longer included in VS2008. Unless you already have J# code, you should probably stay away.

From j# product page:

Since customers have told us that the existing J# feature set largely meets their needs and usage of J# is declining, Microsoft is retiring the Visual J# product and Java Language Conversion Assistant tool to better allocate resources for other customer requirements. The J# language and JLCA tool will not be available in future versions of Visual Studio. To preserve existing customer investments in J#, Microsoft will continue to support the J# and JLCA technology that shipped with Visual Studio 2005 through to 2015 as per our product life-cycle strategy. For more information, see Expanded Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy for Business & Development Products.

Answer 2

The whole purpose of J# is to ease the transition of Java developers to the .NET environment which didn't work so well (I guessing here) so Microsoft dropped J# from Visual Studio 2008. For your question, "Is there a real benefit of using J#?".. in a nutshell... No..

Answer 3

One of the killers I've found with J# in the past is that there is no built in support for referencing web services. That alone has been enough to deter me from it ever since.

Answer 4

C# syntax is so close to Java (and better in some ways) that you might as well learn C# instead of J#. And since C# is more widely used, you can easily find Java --> C# tutorials on google or check out http://www.asp.net/learn and watch some videos.

Answer 5

Instead of J#, I would rather prefer IKVM (http://www.ikvm.net/) to convert my JARs to .NET assemblies as well as access Java APIs in C#.

Answer 6

Strongly agree that syntactically C# beats Java hands down, so there is really no reason to lament the demise of j#. Now trying to get c# compiling to Java bytecode might be an interesting move as Sun's hotspot jvm is great software.

Or, for a bit of fun with what might well become the next generation of Java, how about Scala on the CLR...

Answer 7

I don't think it's a matter of which language is better. In the .NET world there are some inconsistencies between the libraries different languages provide. There are certain functionality that is available in VB.NET that you might like to use from C# but can't. I remember I had to use J# to use some ZIP libraries that were not available in any other language in .NET.

Answer 8

I have used J# as an easy interim step to port a java library into C#. It made for a good way to port code I don't plan to maintain from Java to .Net. However, all new development is being done in C#.