Visual Basic vs. Java

[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

 

[ColinM]

If you use .NET then it shouldn't really matter whether you program in FoxPro, J++ or VB.NET as they all compile down to the same intermediate language to be run on the class framework.
In saying that I haven't tried anything like this. I've got enough problems with VB.NET ;-)

 

[filibuster]

I was not thinking about J++. I would say either use 100% pure java or C#. Let's see what C# will bring.

 

[dilettante]

Ugh, Swing!

The results always look "foreign" and sometimes reminiscent of Win 3.1 unless everyone has a 19" monitor at very high res.

 

[neilkonitzer]

Also, as far as the VB developers go. They're all going through a learning curve to support the upcoming VB.NET. The number of experienced VB.NET developers are few and far between at this time. Neil Konitzer, President
Freisoft

http://www.freisoft.com

 

[dilettante]

More and more shops are turning their backs on VB.Net as well.

We are now convinced that a bunch of C-heads took this as an opportunity to kill VB once and for all. Jiving everything up from those base classes results in one heck of a lot of irrelevent mucking about that has to be done just right every time. Then the goofy idea that everything ought to be an object, with weird properties and methods to do things that used to be implmented as intrinsic functions, etc. etc.

Even MS has admitted privately that VS6 will have to be supported for as many as 5 more years.

I suspect we'll see a revamped VB.Net in a future release that'll remove a lot of the low-level curses imposed on the VB developer by VS.Net as it exists now. They really did come close to killing a cash-cow for themselves. Between VB, VBA, and scripting languages they had a really unique platform at one time. Now? We'll see.

 

[JJR]

Hi Dilettante and others,

First of all: the best wishes to all of you!

Second:

At the Microsoft Developer Days in The Hague in the Netherlands last december a similar question was asked to Bill Gates, who attended the conference the second day a gave a keynote speech on .Net.

He responded that VB will stay not only because it is being used by the largest community of programmers in the world, but also because it gives Microsoft that one advantage over Sun that has always irritated Java developers: swift implementation of new technologies in the language.

C# has been submitted to ECMA so MS also has it's 'standard language'. The problem with C# however is that if MS wants to implement new features, hundreds of 'smart people' want to say something about it and it takes ages before it becomes implemented (this must sound familiar to Java developers).

With VB, MS keeps it's compettitive edge and has the possibility to react rapidly to any changes which make our lives easier.

Jordi Reineman
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young

Have you been jaggled yet?

http://www.jaggle.net

 

[dilettante]

Very interesting, JJR.

I'm a little frustrated so far (can ya tell?).

I wanted to adopt VB.Net in the worst way, but try as I might I am finding that it has raised the bar too far for us.

Maybe VB.Net will mature, maybe we will. I was REALLY REALLY hoping Web Forms was going to be our path into the Internet Age.

Java on the other hand... well WHICH Java (or should I say which J2EE implementation plus proprietary extras)?

I work for a rather large organization, and IT standards are being dictated by non-IT people - for the most part political (literally - this ain't private sector) hangers-on. We have one announced "standard" for J2EE plus plus, and these "big brains" have contracted development that uses yet another, while a second group of such "brains" is advocating a third. Since there are only really three serious players in the (J2EE) game you'll be able to guess the names.

Do they interoperate? Has there been any go-ahead to persue training - or if I crapped a Java expert out, to use it for any project of any kind?

Nope to all the above.

Everything has to go through a mass of red tape and review, and I know of nothing that's made it through the maze yet. For every one IT person on a project there are 3 to 6 non-IT types hanging around their necks.

Enteprise Java is very very pricey and very political because of the costs.

So... though officially we are a "Java shop" there is almost zero Java here and there is zero expertise and zero in-house Java projects!

As a result we default to Cobol, Algol (you'd have to know our platform to understand - most people think of Algol as a "dead language" like Ancient Greek or Latin, but it ain't so!), VB, and C++

The Algol and C++ people are very scarce here too, but we don't need that many of them (whew!).