Tim Bray, one of the initial developers of the XML spec, recently joined Sun as a Technology Director.
In his blog he discusses why he chose to work for Sun, and discusses the current drawbacks of the .NET platform.
His main points about .NET:
- Java hits the 80/20 point in terms of functionality – 20% of the initial effort in developing the language achieved 80% of the goal (the remaining 80% of development of the language and platform has been filling in the last 20% of features used by the few), whereas .NET arrived on day 1 with so many features (in traditional Microsoft bloatware style), but falls short of meeting 80% of the goal.
- .NET is created by a company that has a history of delivering client side applications, whereas it can be argued the most important aspect of a web-based business application today is what goes on at the backend