Java vs. Visual Basic

[filibuster]

I'm new in this forum, so I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask. My background is couple of years programming in MS Visual Foxpro and two years of Java development. For a project I'm comparing a VB GUI against a Java/Swing GUI.

I'm thinking about a Client/Server application (the server written in Java/EJB/JSP) and any kind of client.
So the client can be written in Java, Visual Basic or any other Programming Environment.
I don't care if the client is platform specific or which language it is written in.
That is because the core app is the server side, which remains the same for all sites,
but the GUI is highly customized for special environments and will probably not be reused.

So the GUI could be written in Visual Basic, maybe with less time effort (this is an assumption) and
using VB programmers with VB being easier to train than Java/Swing (this is an assumption,
but at least Swing can be awfully complicated sometimes)

Let's take my scenario (this is not an assumption):
- Server-side implemented in EJB/JSP
- Client GUI:
- three sub modules
- one sub module is a tabbed pane with three tabs, two containing a Table each and one containing another tabbed pane
- the two other sub modules are wizards with about 6 masks
- client GUI can be single threaded
--> not too complicated but tricky sometimes, e.g. the Table should behave like an Excel table (easier to do in VB)
- The client talks to the server using EJB (java client) or XML/structured text delivered by JSP (non-java client)
- Computation performed on client (Plus/Minus/Multipication etc) is pretty low
- some native DLLs have to be invoked (can be done somehow in Java, but muuuuch easier in VB).

Following speed considerations:
- development time
- speed: networking (client/server communication): with Java Client RMI/IIOP with serialization is used, with VB probably some sort of HTTP request to JSP page
- speed: invocation of client DLL (VB probably faster)
- GUI response time (e.g. switching between tabs)
- computations

any comments are highly appreciated
holger

 

[Spellman]

I tend to agree with you. As somebody who's programmed in both Java and VB then for a GUI the development time in VB is definitely a lot less and also VB is by far the easier of the two to learn with it's point and click method of designing your screens.