Making a difference

The strength of the Java platform has earned it the backing of many other companies besides Sun, the most important being IBM. Microsoft is doing its best to make inroads into this captive market. There is no question that C^# has an excellent pedigree as a language: Anders Hejlsberg, head of the team that developed C^#, was also the man behind Delphi. Like Java, C^# is deeply integrated into its environment—in this case, the. NET environment that Microsoft is at present promoting avidly.

A particular strength of this environment for C^# is RAD (rapid application development), a concept originally developed by Mr Hejlsberg in connection with Delphi. RAD is all about putting handy, pedagogical tools within a mouse-click of the program's developer, making it easier for beginners to learn the language, and also quicker for professionals to write demanding applications. Support for RAD is just one example of how the C^# language and the. NETenvironmentare intimately linked. Sun has responded to Microsoft's emphasis on a programming environment by formally giving the Java environment the name ONE (open net environment).

Of course, winning the loyalty of young programmers requires more than just clever software. As part of its charm offensive, Microsoft will provide the language free to students in a package calledVS. NET Academic, which is scheduled to be released later this year. Indeed, in a manner most unlike the hard-nosed Microsoft of old, the company aims to have C^# recognised as a standard available free next year through the European Computer Manufacturers Association, an internationally recognised standard setter.

As the battle between C^# and Java rages in the student dormitories, the struggle will continue on a rather more conceptual level on the web. Conceptually, the two languages represent wholly different bets on the future of the Internet. Mr Hejlsberg, not one to mince his words, is emphatic that the Internet is about data transfer and not data processing. Where Java's philosophy is based on moving applets around the Internet—which, for many, is disturbingly similar to creating computer viruses—C^# focuses much more on moving information. This is one of the reasons why Microsoft has embraced XML (extensible mark-up language) as an open standard for data transfer on the web.

Although XML is a language, it is not a programming language. For one thing, it cannot perform mathematical or logical manipulation of data. Rather it is, as the “X” in its name implies, an extremely flexible definition of how data should be transferred over the Internet. In this, XML contrasts with HTML (hypertext mark-up language), the most popular protocol for data transfer on the web today, which is seen by the cognoscenti as far too limited in scope for the future of the Internet. Of course, Microsoft is not alone in implementing the freely available XML standard. Indeed, XML is already widely used in combination with Java programs. But C^# has the marked advantage of being developed with XML in mind, rather than as an afterthought.

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