Contents - Cultural View

Comparison of Java and C Sharp 80
out to unmanaged code. An assembly (program or library) using unsafe code must be compiled with a special switch
and will be marked as such. This enables runtime environments to take special precautions before executing
potentially harmful code.
Runtime environments
Java (the programming language) is designed to execute on the Java platform via the Java Runtime Environment
(JRE). The Java platform includes the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) as well as a common set of libraries. The JRE
was originally designed to support interpreted execution with final compilation as an option. Most JRE environments
execute fully or at least partially compiled, possibly with adaptive optimization. The Java compiler produces Java
bytecode. Upon execution the bytecode is loaded by the Java runtime and either interpreted directly or compiled to
machine instructions and then executed.
C# is designed to execute on the Common Language Runtime (CLR). The CLR is designed to execute fully
compiled code. The C# compiler produces Common Intermediate Language instructions. Upon execution the
runtime loads this code and compiles to machine instructions on the target architecture.
Language history and evolution
Java
Java is older than C# and has built up a large and highly active user base, becoming the lingua franca in many
modern branches of computer science, particularly areas which involve networking. Java dominates programming
courses at high school and college level in the United States, and there are currently more Java than C# books. [21]
Java's maturity and popularity have ensured more third party Java API and libraries (many of them open source) than
C#.
An occasionally voiced criticism [22] of the Java language is that it evolves slowly, lacking some features which
make fashionable programming patterns and methodologies easier. Some critics suggest that the designers of C#
may pander too quickly to current trends in programming, thus lacking focus and simplicity. Java's designers seem to
have taken a more conservative stand on adding major new features to their language syntax than other current
languages, perhaps not wanting to tie the language too tightly with trends which may prove to be dead ends.
These trends have been broken with the Java 5.0 release, which introduced several new major language features: a
foreach construct, autoboxing, methods with variable number of parameters (varargs), enumerated types, generic
types, and annotations. With the exception of Generics, C# included all these features from its beginning, some
under different names. [23] Proposals and specifications for the new features had been worked on in the Java
community for considerable time before they were introduced. Indeed, some had been in gestation since before C#'s
initial release (e.g., work on Generics formally began in May 1999 [24] ) such was the Java community's conservatism
at that time.
Problem-specific language additions to Java have been considered and, for now at least, rejected. This approach,
along with a number of other new languages and technologies that address themselves specifically towards current
programming trends, has sparked a renewed debate within the Java camp about the future direction of the Java
language and whether its 'conservative evolution' is right.
As of 2008 debate continued over the inclusion of closures [25] and properties [26] into the language syntax for Java 7.