Comparison of the Java and .NET platforms

This is a comparison of Microsoft software development (.NET platform development) with the Java programming development. The two platforms, their programming libraries, their binary formats, and their runtime environments have largely been governed by very different means. International standards organizations Ecma International and ISO/IEC define the standard for the .NET executable environment (known as the Common Language Infrastructure, or C... more

This is a comparison of Microsoft software development (.NET platform development) with the Java programming development. The two platforms, their programming libraries, their binary formats, and their runtime environments have largely been governed by very different means. International standards organizations Ecma International and ISO/IEC define the standard for the .NET executable environment (known as the Common Language Infrastructure, or CLI), and .NET executable format (known as Common Intermediate Language, or CIL), but excluding most of the foundation classes (the Base Class Library, or BCL). This formal committee-based standardization process is in keeping with the way very popular languages like COBOL, Fortran and C have been standardized in the past. The standards do not include many new libraries that Microsoft has implemented on top of the standard framework, such as those for accessing databases, or building GUI and Web applications, such as Windows Forms, ASP.NET and... less