I'm interested in experienced .Net developers' opinions about whether
I should convert an existing Java program to J# or C#.

I thought this was a no-brainer until I discovered that with the
release of V.S. 2008, Microsoft has ceased to develop or publish J#.
That makes the question much more difficult.

The program in question is one that I began several years ago but
abandoned because it required integration with Microsoft Office, and
that proved too difficult for the amount of time I could give the
project. I believe that the .Net platform will make integration much
easier, so I am interested in resuming work.

Conversion from Java to J# should be fairly easy, and would give me an
easy "reverse migration" path if I later want to develop a
platform-independent version of the program. But, I've now learned, I
would be committing myself to a language that has just been iced.

Conversion from Java to C# would probably be harder, and would tie me
to the .Net platform unless I was willing to convert from C# back to
Java (ugly) or to C++ (ugly++).

Thoughts, anyone?

J# was based on a fairly old java version (mostly JDK 1.1.4?).
IMHO: J# was acceptable for some migration time (2002-2005), but failed in
todays mainstream market.


what is the target of this solution?
Desktop application, server-side, web? GUI/CUI?

On Desktops (Windows >90% market share),
<URL:http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=8>
java seems near obsolete today.
And many larger companies switched to .NET (even exclusively), according
(Quote):
'It's Official: .Net Roasts Java's Beans'
<URL:http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/014981.html>
<URL:http://www.itbusiness.ca/IT/client/en/home/News.asp?id=46224&cid=6>


For a portable .NET (CLI) and C# implementation, check Mono (Novell):
http://www.mono-project.com/



--
Thomas Scheidegger - 'NETMaster'
http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_dotnet.html - http://dnetmaster.net/

On Fri, 4 Jan 2008 01:25:44 +0100, "Thomas Scheidegger"
<spam.netmaster (AT) swissonline (DOT) ch> wrote:

It will have two closely coupled parts. One will be an add-on to
Microsoft Word. The other will be a stand-alone GUI application. It
has the potential to work with non-MS applications in place of Word,
which would not necessarily run on a Windows platform.

I'd like to look at the item you're referring to, but that link took
me to a page that shows OS market share, not language market share.

Java was my primary language during the most recent part of my life
when I was programming actively, and I'm still in touch with it. If
Java is nearly obsolete, there is a large, vibrant community of
developers who are not aware of it.

In this particular case, I know that a large part of my potential user
base runs FrameMaker on *nix. Mono could be a solution there, but
I'll have to learn more about it before I can form an opinion.