I’ve always wanted to learn another language and platform and being a long-time .NET developer Java seemed the closest to my knowledge and one which would seem easy to learn based on what I already knew.

I’ve put off this for various reason along the last 3-4 years, most of which laziness was chief.

Recently some colleagues moved from our project to another project that involves Java modules and since .NET is not a first-class citizen in my employer’s eyes I thought maybe it could serve me as a kind of an ‘insurance’ – to learn Java.

I’ve obtained (..) some ebooks (Effective Java and Thinking in Java), downloaded JDK, a few IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA and NetBeans, no Eclipse for me, thanks) and started doing HelloWorld’s and stuff like that. I noticed JavaFX (which is quite similar to WPF on which I currently work)

I’ve came across two nice comparisons of Java and .NET, written in a constructive manner (i.e. not “mine is better, na nanana”) :

• Java / C# comparision
• Java for C# Programmers by Cristoph Nahr

Using these two articles I compiled (yes, that’s the original meaning of the word :P) a PowerPoint slideshow.

Then I thought there might be other (.NET developer) colleagues that might be interested in my research and gave an internal presentation based on the slideshow and expanding each item by talk.

I thought I should share it with everyone so here it is (download here) :

I’ve written about Java / C# differences before, and I might continue that series in the near future, with practical examples and counter-examples.