RE: Why pay for VS.NET when JAVA is Free?

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Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 10:49:10 -0800

"Mike Cox" wrote:

> I've been a long time Windows developer until recently. Why should any
> company pay for developer tools when they could be had for free? My last
> Visual Studio product was Visual Studio 6.0. I then moved over to linux
> and GCC because web services were still in its infancy and no one was
> really using it. Therefore GCC, CORBA(ACE/TAO) and Linux were good enough
> compared to VC++ 7.0 and ATL 7.0.
>
> While Linux and GCC were good, Microsoft's IDE still rocked, and had a
> value. Linux developers needed to be smart because Emacs LISP is tough to
> wrap your head around in order to create the same functionality as MS VS.
> Furthermore, Emacs is uglier, and debugging is similar although less
> intuitive than VS. I was smart enough and a cheap enough to learn
> Emacs, so that VS was irrelevant unless eye candy counted.
>
> But lately, Web Services have started to mature. I was faced with a choice,
> go with .NET and VS.NET or move to JAVA. I looked at the costs associated
> with Microsoft versus JAVA / SUN and found SUN to be the low cost leader.
> StarOffice is cheaper than MS office. Solaris 10 will be completely free
> and include DTrace and other goodies. When I visited SUN's website, I saw
> free this and free that!
>
> But the best thing that was free IMHO was JAVA. Why should anyone pay $2500
> USD for VS.NET Enterprise Edition when one can just click to SUN.com and
> download J2EE and get exactly the same functionality for free!? Plus on
> top of that you will soon get a free Solaris 10 with DTrace and a new
> filesystem that can hold incredible amounts of data. When Solaris 10 comes
> out, my Linux and Windows boxes will head to the trash can.
>
> Why am I posting this? Well, to say that Microsoft is losing its developer
> base because competitively, they are more expensive than SUN now. SUN is
> the low cost leader. If MS made VS.NET enterprise free I might consider
> coming back, but only if they made MS Office more competitive with Open
> Office and reduced prices on their Server products. If Sun Solaris 10 is
> free robust and virus free, why pay through the nose for Windows then?
> Microsoft made its fortune on being the high volume low cost provider, but
> now it is more expensive than SUN. How ironic!
>

• Previous message: Yonas Hagos: "Re: Setup project"
• In reply to: Mike Cox: "Why pay for VS.NET when JAVA is Free?"
• Next in thread: PixelSlave: "RE: Why pay for VS.NET when JAVA is Free?"
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