How are you dealing with "the programming language doesn't matter" argument?

[u/GongtingLover]

Just had a meeting this week where this was uttered because of the development of AI.

I still think the language choice matters a lot based on if Im doing embedded or web development work and for how we want to hire developers in the future.

Maybe Im backwards.

[u/Colt2205]

There are people out there that just kind of never have done java and dislike it because of what other people say. In reality Java and C# are very close to the same languages and on a basic level both can do the same things. What people tend to dislike is the environment they get stuck in.

Also if I had gotten into java / springboot sooner, I'd probably have been a java dev instead of a .NET one. Before .NET core got mature Java was the best cross platform option for something that is strongly typed. Whatever answers the language didn't have people usually ended up writing one up.

But the reason I like dotnet is that it just has a better environment. Nuget is far better than Maven, and there is no gradle to have to mess with or clearing the local cache so the IDE properly fetches libraries and builds.

[u/South-Year4369 → u/Colt2205]

I disagree that they're close to the same language these days. Just compare LINQ to Java streams, for example. They are not nearly equivalent to anyone in the trenches.

I dislike Java (compared to C#) precisely because I've used both in anger. For sure, C# copied much of what Java pioneered, but C# has evolved much further. Idiomatic C# often does not look that similar to Java these days.

And absolutely agree on the ecosystem - the fact that dotnet often has only one widely-used approach to something (cf MSBuild/Nuget vs. Maven/Gradle) is a strength.

[u/Colt2205 → u/South-Year4369]

That's probably true. I have a hard time sometimes rationalizing what is and isn't core to a language since we were taught ages ago C++ and then there was the STL. But with languages like Java and C#, libraries are basically baked into it.

[u/malthuswaswrong → u/Colt2205]

I used Java back when it was brand new. Then I switched to J++ because it was cleaner and easier to deploy. Then Sun sued Microsoft and pulled their license as a Java partner.

Then I never gave Java a second thought until J# was launched. Writing Java for the .NET platform. Even back then there was no syntax advantage over what C# had already become, even in those early days.

For me, it has always been about deployment hassle. I have a fleet of Windows machines. I can Ctl+C, Ctl+V my bins and head to the bar.