Someone wrote "J# is for migrating away from Java.
It's not a good tool for building new .NET applications. "

Does the community agree with this ?
Should I offer Visual J# as an alternative IDE in a first Java Course ???
Given that there are multiple JVMs, I wonder if a future Microsoft JVM is
plausible ?
Opinions please
Bob

It does seem that Microsoft is leaving J# in the mix as a fully
supported language. There was an MSDN video somewhere detailing new J#
language features for .NET 2.0. I was surprised as I'd always believed
J# was just a migration tool.

But - J# is definitely not Java. Any language additions they've made
recently are not Java compatible. J# /can/ compile JDK 1.1 compatible
Java code, as well as older J++ code (JDK 1.1 plus MS extensions),
though there are some limitations (like no JNI support) on that -- but
J# is definitely married to the .NET platform and runtime.

It does present an interesting option of allowing a single codebase to
compile both to .NET and modern JVMs, if you're willing and able to
live within the constraints. IKVM is an open-source compiler that is a
good alternative to consider for supporting both Java and .NET
runtimes.

To sum up - I would not offer J# as an alternative IDE for a Java
course, it's not that. And I seriously doubt MS will produce a real
JVM, they arguably never really did in the first place.