Or you will lose credibility with an audience that knows anything about developer communities and how they are evolving.
If you are still pitching Java vs .NET your marketing is at least three years out of date.
The world has moved on.
Don’t talk about Java vs. .NET and then claim Eclipse and MySQL are not relevant because they are just departmental, or you will really embarrass yourself.
The worst parties in repeating the mantra of Java vs .NET are Microsoft and Sun. Please cut the guff, and think about what you’re pitching and who you’re talking to.
Java vs .NET? According to internal Microsoft research, helpfully surfaced by John Montgomery, C++ rules.
I am not saying that Java is dead or anything daft like that (in fact Java One was buzzing), but the instruments are just too blunt to be useful.
disclaimer: Sun is a subscription client, Microsoft is an occasional client.
Before getting pulled into a flame war of marvelous proportions, I should point out that the data I was citing was for the non-professional developer segment — students, hobbyists, and so on — not professional developers or professionals by night. In the case of pro developers, the top staticly-typed language is still VB. C++ is up there, though.
I have to agree, James. The actual decision is about whether to outsource your system architecture (and the control over procurement that goes with it). By the time it’s a technology discussion the decision has always been long made in most accounts I have visited. I’ve not been called in to this debate for quite some time, apart from in rabble-rousing public fora (and I’ve declined such invitations for a few years now).