I am building a list, that's actually inspired by "101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot".  Its a list of 101 reasons of why Java is better than .NET.  101 reasons is actually a pretty ambitious number, however its always good to aim high first.  If you don't succeed you could always relax the criteria for success! 

Anyway, I have now accumulated 71 reasons. I will be blogging them in increments of 5 each day.  Hopefully, with feedback and suggestions from the community, the goal of 101 reasons will be achieved.

Here now are reasons 1 to 5:

1. Run on Multiple Platforms from the Smallest Devices to the Largest Mainframes.

Run on multiple platforms, from smart cards, embedded devices(JStamp), cell phones(Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson etc), pdas (Palm, Symbian, Sharp),laptops and desktops (MacOS, Linux), servers (Unix based), Non Stop Servers (Tandem) to Mainframes ( IBM ).

2. Run Dynamic Languages

Run Dynamic Languages like Python (JPython) , Scheme (JScheme, SISC, Kawa), Ruby(JRuby), Smalltalk(Bistro). In comparison a commercial development effort to port Python to .NET showed dismal performance. Furthermore, a paper comparing the CLR and the JVM came to similar conclusions .

3. Compile in One Platform Run in Another.

Visual Studio.NET and .NET SDK End User License Agreements specifically states that code compiled with it cannot run in non-microsoft platforms.

4. Smaller Runtime Download

The Java Runtime Evironment (JRE) is a 8MB runtime download, .NET runtime download is over twice as large (i.e. 20 MB).

5. No mandatory upgrades. No subscription fees. No software insurance fees.

How many MIS organizations are held hostage to microsoft's draconian licensing policies?

Stay tuned tomorrow for the next set.