Differences between Java and C# and .NET

Question

Apologies in advance for the possible flame thread, but that's not what I'm going for.

I've only ever done serious development in Linux using C and C++, and I'm looking to take the plunge into Windows. I've been doing some reading and asking around, and it seems to me that .NET with C# is the way to go for developing commercial user-oriented business applications for Windows.

A big consideration for me is the integration of the user interface into the desktop, since this is what the user ultimately interacts with. Is it possible to recreate the look of the Office 2007 GUI in Java, for example, or is this only possible with .NET?

I'm also concerned about portability. In the future, I may want to port the application to Linux. I know about the mono project, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to go with Java.

In short, what are the trade offs between Java and C# when developing commercial, user-oriented business applications primarily intended for Windows?

Answer 1

The most important bit is in "primarily intended for Windows".

If you only need to work on Windows, C# is likely to be a much better bet than Java. There's a better variety of visual styles which blend in well with Windows. It also makes interoperating with native code (e.g. bits of the Win32 API or COM libraries) easier than Java. Personally I prefer it as a language, but that's a different matter.

If you need to run on other platforms, I'd seriously consider Java. While Mono has quite a lot of momentum, it doesn't have the same degree of compatibility with .NET as Java does on the various platforms it supports.

So basically, weigh up the "may want to port" aspect very carefully - it's the driving factor in the decision, from my point of view. Once you've decided to do a port, it doesn't matter much if 90% of your customers are on Windows - it'll still need to work, and work well, for the remaining 10%.

Answer 2

Since you have an expirence with C++, you can go with C++ plus Qt for GUI. It's a good cross platform GUI library, and you can recompile the code to work in Windows, Mac, and Linux with consistent look.

Sure you can make nice interfaces with it, but maybe not as cool as MS Office interface (Microsoft blend).

You may consider it as an option. http://www.qtsoftware.com/products/

Examples http://www.qtsoftware.com/qt-in-use

Answer 3

First off, whether or not your GUI will look good on windows will depend more on your skill with GUI design than it will on your choice of language or toolkit.

Windows Forms doesn't really give you full access to the Windows GUI functionality using the documented API. You'll have to make calls to native API functions or at least use windows-specific messages to achieve some effects. Also, I don't think there is a built-in way to access the Office 2007-style ribbon control. You'll need a 3rd party component for that.

A lot of .Net apps rely on 3rd party widget sets to achieve nice looking GUIs. Be warned that these frequently rely on P/Invoke or other windows-specific functionaly and thus don't work on mono. So if you really want a cross platform GUI, .Net is not the best choice.

You can also do .Net GUIs in Windows Presentation Foundation, but again this is not supported in mono.

GTK# works well on Unix and windows, though it looks slightly less native on Windows.

Java Swing is very cross platform and is looks pretty good with a platform native look and feel. You could download Netbeans to see it in action.

SWT is an alternate toolkit for Java that has slightly less cross-platform compatibility than Swing, but is still popular nonetheless. Eclipse uses this toolkit, so download that to see it in use.