.NET at JavaONE

windows bios world writes: "As this article states, 'There was little love from the leaders of the Java movement toward Microsoft's new framework for creating Web services, but there were signs of accommodation among some at the conference.' One of the most popular booth-trinkets was a button with a slash through it that said .NOT. A video shown at the first keynote depicted the Java Smart Car driving circles around a Bill Gates look-alike. The back of Bill's T-shirt, of course, was emblazoned with a J-flat logo instead of J-sharp."

A better comparison...

[fm6]

...would be "petulant toddlers". Most teenagers I know have a broader world-view than most of Sun's management and staff. To be fair, Microsoft probably isn't any better.

When I worked at Sun, copies of the Bill-Borg magazine cover were everywhere. Funny at first, but tiresome after a while. And when the Bill-the-Nazi [enemy.org] graphic started showing up, I wanted to scream, "Grow up, people!"

My favorite example from the other side. During the 2K election, one of the voters NPR interviewed was an highly-optioned MS guy who wasn't gonna get to retire at 35 after all. Naturally he blamed his woes on Bill, Hil, and Al. He proclaimed that he would vote Republican "out of enlightened self-interest"!

Re:Always nice to see

[spongman]

I agree. When was the last time you saw Bill Gates stand up in front of an audience (microsoft company meetings aside) and say that McNealy or Ellison and their companies are a bunch of mindless jerks that'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes (or some other childish insult).

The funny thing is that it's not Microsoft that's killing Sun in the marketplace right now, it's open source projects like *BSD and Linux (with a little help from IBM).

But it just wouldn't be fashionable for McNealy to admit that they're losing money to free software (which they are), that's something that only big-bad-bill (or maybe ballmer - he's a litle bigger) would say. On the other hand it's much more acceptable to point the ($1e9) finger of blame at Microsoft. Hey, everyone's doing it!

Does he seriously thing that if Microsoft disappeared off the face of the planet that everyone would suddenly buy Sun? Yeah right. You could either double your cost on hardware/software by going from Microsoft to Sun/Oracle/iPlanet or do it for free. Sure you may have a slightly higher TCO with open source, but have you seen what an Oracle DBA charges (I mean... Oracle's just sooo easy to use :-} )?

Re:Always nice to see

[Gaijin42]

> Sure you may have a slightly higher TCO with open source, but have you seen what an Oracle DBA charges?

Um. the T stands for Total, which would include your DBA cost. If open source has a higher TCO, then there is 0 reason to use it, since TCO includes support, efficiency, downtime, admin, etc.

And actually, oracle is easy to use for anyone trained as a database person. You might be able to get mySQL off the ground right away, but it certainly wont scale to the degree that oracle or mssql will.

Re:Always nice to see

[Kerg]

The funny thing is that it's not Microsoft that's killing Sun in the marketplace right now, it's open source projects

So how much "open source" hardware is out there? I can't think of any.

Sun Needs to

[adamy]

Stop focusing on MS. They have a bettwer product in the things that they focus on (Scalability, OS) and better parteners they can turn to for Support (Oracle has nothing to Fear from Sun). Java is a great langauge, and a clear direction to go. Who cares what MS comes up with? Sun and MS, believe it or not, are in different markets. There is overlap, in the development strategy they are pushing, but not in their core strengths.

But if they did that...

[fm6]

...then they couldn't write all those silly "FUD Watch" rants. Which are, of course, themselves a kind of FUD!

Who's a monopolist?

[Atrus5]

Using its own standards and APIs. As McNealy put it, "The community aspects of Sun ONE will win over .NET. It's mankind versus the monopolists."

Naming your product "Sun ONE" is pretty blatent if you ask me, at least M$ give you a break with names. Sure it uses open, standard interfaces between components but that's only because they're the minority so it's to their advantage to be interpolation. I doubt it would stay that way once they've won (I think the pun is intended). Sun is just another big company trying to make money so you can't get too upset qwith them for trying to gain market share by recruiting anti-M$ people. Hiding your monoply-in-the-making within an anti-monoply ball is the logical strategy afterall.

Another thing that bothers me is that Sun has always, at least in the public works I've seen, dismissed their competetiors and childishly called them names. The strategy of pretending that the competition isn't competition at all is a tried-and-failed one. I would much rather see Sun encourging intelligent debate and taking note of the arguments on both sides to improve their platform.

This guy wasn't there, huh? :)

[dmorin]

The buttons says no to .NET (big red circle and slash through it and were given out by Data Representations, makers of the Simplicity IDE). I got one from a hot girl on the first day. :) And the Bill Gates lookalike had a shirt that said .NOT on the front, and C-flat on the back.

For those that are saying "ooo, childish", do try to remember that it's supposed to be in fun, to entertain the crowd. There's a role for evangelizing. Many people will tell you that the primary reason they go is to get pumped up about what they do for a living. You don't do that by saying "Wow, ya know, .NET is just as good as Java." At last McNealy stopped the damned top ten lists.

And don't forget Monkey Boy Ballmer. No one at JavaONE yelled "Give it up for me."

Re:This guy wasn't there, huh? :)

[Da Big Chet]

lemme put this into perspective. i am at teched right now, this very second. in the past 3 days, there has been no java or sun bashing. none. in fact, in the current session that i should be paying more attention to instead of typing this, its a comparison of J2EE architecture vs .NET vs COM/ASP. i wonder what will influence your companies CEO more when making technology decisions: well though out arguments, or some .DAT c-flat buttons?

c#

[xjnfx]

i dont care what anyone says- its still c-pound to me. I'm gonna freak the first time an operator tells me to hit the sharp key on my phone.