I'm catching up on the blog-o-sphere that I missed while out of town. I really like this post by Philip Greenspun (courtesy of Don Box); he likens Java to the SUV of software development.
It's been a while since I've touched anything Java (besides JavaScript -- which is very different despite the marketing folks at Netscape branding their scripting language after Java!), but I can relate to those students struggling to make heads or tails of the Java framework. Once I got beyond the complexities and became comfortable with Java, it was indeed powerful. I found switching to .Net (c# particularly!) pretty easy -- partly because of the hard work I invested in learning Java and the Java APIs. Somebody new to .Net might feel like it's an SUV, too, but I think the tools and support from the .Net community have matured more quickly than Java ever did. This is probably because Microsoft leverages the experience of others like no other business I know, and I come from a strong Visual Studio background. The convergence of the familiar and slick development environment, Visual Studio, with the powerful .Net platform really struck a chord with me.
Going forward, Microsoft (a software company) and .Net are very closely tied; compare that to Sun Microsystems (when it comes down to it a high-end server company) and Java -- not the same sort of relationship; what does Sun get from Java anyway?
Happy .Netting