Apple Ruins Microsoft's New Ad Campaign

I think this is a key point that you make. I used to write ASP code for commercial web sites, and I always hosted those sites on Microsoft IIS systems. With most users running IE, that made for Microsoft technology from one end to the other. In that case everything worked pretty well. ASP development was very straight forward, especially for anyone familiar with Microsoft development systems.

My main problems with that approach were cost and uptime. The IIS servers were more expensive: the software cost more, took more hardware, and required more support. Resource exhaustion and reboots were fairly common. If you switched to a "compatible" server then the incompatibilities began, and Microsoft never tries to play well with others, unless they are dragged kicking and screaming.

Microsoft makes some good products. They have never been good innovators, but they do take innovations and convert them to successful products.

Working with Microsoft is like being assimilated by the Borg: "Resistance is fu-tile." It's an all-or-nothing deal. If you want to use product A, you need product B too, and you have to host on server C. If you stay with their technology, things mostly work, and in some cases work quiet well. If you mix and match, problems ensue and you are on your own to fix them.

I don't fault Microsoft for their attitude. They are big enough that they can force people to play by their rules. I would do the same. Still, it doesn't mean I have to like it.

Tom

 

Working backwards to forwards (mostly because i find the end the most interesting part here )... My gut tells me otherwise, based mostly on anecdotal evidence. I would absolutely love to get two people to prepare the Pet Shop application for the latest Java and .NET releases, but realistically i don't have time to do that.

I know that Java VM's do still make a difference today, but it's not as bad as it once was. In the past year we've had to upgrade our servers. The obvious path was to just get the newest Solaris servers, but we did some investigation and found that similar spec'd AIX boxes delivered better performance. It wasn't much, but as you know, every little bit helps.

Finally, some of the biggest websites on the internet are also run on Java - Google uses java extensively. Amazon uses it. As Jonnycat said, so does eBay. I don't know about all of the banks, but i can tell you TCF uses Java, and it's a pretty big bank. Best Buy uses Java. So yes, we can find huge players on the web to support both sides. Claiming these sites in one camp or the other, however, doesn't really help us address the question of performance differences