As many of you know, I am a Java programmer by trade. I have enterprise experience using several J2EE products such as IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, Macromedia JRun, and the ever so cool, JBoss. However, a year or so ago, I tried out C#. WOW! I was impressed! Just being able to compile to an executable was a plus. I have tried JET for Java with allows you to run Java as executable but with significant overhead and big $$$. No thanks!

So I started thinking... All I heard from most of the Java community was about how horrible .NET was and that it would be dead within a year. Well, it's wasn't so I started checking it out. I started thinking. Well, Java has this great grass roots community with a lot of support from other developers online. Since .NET is not open source, what kind of community support would I find? I was amazed! There were so many sites just loaded with information for .NET developers! Everything from code snippets to FAQs to full blown open source .NET applications!

After some research and hands on use, I am sold on .NET. I have started porting some Java applications to .NET just for practice and am working to see how many of the design and architectural patters that I have used with Java will fit into .NET. I am still a Java programmer, not by choice, but due economic forces beyond my control. The number of .NET jobs seems to be growing rapidly and when I combine that with my drive to learn as much about .NET as I can, I am certain it will lead to a .NET job in the near future.

I feel Java made some great strides in application development and I think that it would be a shame for .NET developers to ignore them by reinventing the wheel. Already a lot of the cool Java open source projects have been ported to .NET with great success (NAnt, NUnit, NDoc, ...just to name a few...) I will probably be posting some Java to .NET questions soon, so if anyone has experience with both, or has tackled the same issues before, feel free to post your comments!