Go学长围观Java boy嘲讽C#

Back then the platform still had some traffic. Zhang Shanyou was Microsoft’s C# evangelist in China. When he was still struggling at Tencent, I nearly believed him. In the end, I switched directly to the Go language.

In 2015, I often fought online with “java boy” (junky boy). Thinking back now, it’s a bit funny.

In 2020, I met him once in the elevator at Kexing Science Park. I said to him: “Isn’t C# not doing so well now?” He looked very embarrassed, but since we were in the same downward elevator, he responded politely.

Formal Logic and Definitions

*Leather Pants Principle **:
When answering someone’s question, you don’t always need to tell them the real answer. Very often, giving them an answer that *matches their imagination works better. Because not everyone has the courage to accept that they don’t understand something or is willing to explore an unknown field. Most people prefer to use their existing beliefs to explain everything they see.

AOT Dynamic Library (Ahead-of-Time Dynamic Library) is a type of native dynamic library (such as .dll, .so, .dylib) generated by .NET under AOT compilation mode. It allows C# code to be referenced like C/C++ libraries, without requiring the .NET runtime to execute.

Background

.NET (hereinafter referred to as N) thinks: enterprises may not use .NET much nowadays, but at least the syntax is elegant, and its IDE is the strongest in the universe.

JAVA (hereinafter referred to as J) thinks: Java is everywhere — Android, Kotlin, Scala — in short: awesome.

The Flame War

The story began when the declining N wanted to learn Android. After some experience, he started complaining about Android Studio. Everyone knows how buggy it can be. Naturally, N also blamed Google and eventually complained about Java as well. For fairness, here are the complaints:

1. Projects freeze without reason
2. Emulator rotation bugs
3. Dalvik VM is ridiculous, a performance killer
4. Java doesn’t support implicit variable declaration

J: “.NET is practically useless… can’t handle large clusters… few developers… needs licensing…”

N: “Storage solutions can use MySQL too. It’s just that many enterprise integrations were taken by Java.”

J: “Because .NET wasn’t open-source at that time. This is the power of open source. In the end .NET was forced to open source anyway.”

N thinks: “What does open-source have to do with this?”
Then says: “25 servers support stackoverflow.com. Saying .NET can’t scale is prejudice. Performance bottlenecks are about people, not languages.”

J: “If .NET scaled well, JD.com wouldn’t have painfully switched to Java.”

N: “That’s a language design issue! Not application performance!”

J: “If you don’t like the design, don’t use it. And the syntax sugar you mentioned already exists in Java 8. Scala also supports syntax sugar.”

N: “Are you sure Java 8 supports implicit type inference?”

J: “I said syntax sugar. Do you even know what that means?”

N: “Isn’t var syntax sugar?”

J: “If you like that style, you can use Kotlin. It compiles to Java bytecode with all the new features. This is the power of open source. Even if .NET copies, it still can’t compete.”

N thinks: “Damn, you can’t win so you summon your allied language? Different languages, okay? .NET can compile to MSIL too. Should I summon MSBuild next? MSBuild is open-source and cross-platform now. Should I bring that up?”
But to maintain some dignity, N says: “You make it sound like Java had lambda expressions earlier than .NET.”

J: “You make it sound like your runtime mechanism is not similar to Java’s.”

Bystander: “If you love .NET so much, why are you learning Android?”

N realizes the situation is bad — he walked into a den of Java fans. He quickly retreats:
“Good and bad are relative. Comparing your strengths with others’ weaknesses is meaningless. Each language has its merits. A society without criticism cannot progress. If you’re unhappy with the government, will you jump into a river? No — you still struggle on. Let’s stop here, this is pointless.”

J is not satisfied and strikes again:
“Cut it out. You insult Java in a Java group — who wouldn’t hit you? Languages have no inherent good or bad, but you insult people’s livelihood tools on their turf. That’s not basic manners. And you’re not even good at Java, yet you judge Java? You don’t understand Android’s VM yet you criticize it?”

Yes, the one being beaten was me. Regarding the last sentence: Dalvik VM really was awful. Just look at the news — why else did Google create ART later? If something is bad, others can point it out. Pretending criticism is forbidden is narrow-minded. .NET has many flaws too. I just didn’t mention them. But if someone points them out, that’s fair — it’s the truth. Why can’t I refute? Haha. Of course, I only say this here, because I remembered the Leather Pants Principle.

These people were extremely arrogant.

Thoughts from 2025-11-27

The above content is compiled from an article published on cnblogs on April 27, 2015 at 23:48. Judging from today’s situation, cnblogs is almost defunct, while Mr. Zhang Shanyou founded Shenzhen Youhaoda, and remains a Microsoft MVP. According to TIOBE, C# is gradually eroding Java’s market share, and now .NET Core can be compiled into pure native machine code via AOT dynamic libraries for use by the following languages:

1
2
3
4
5
6
    •  C/C++
    •  Go
    •  Rust
    •  Python (via FFI)
    •  Unity Native Plugin
    •  iOS / Android Native

For C++ developers, this means I can write C++-callable libraries using .NET Core — essentially infiltrating their home turf. Microsoft truly is the most “evil” organization in the programming language world.

References

[1] 月经贴:当落魄的.NET基佬遇上不可一世的JAVA派 developer https://www.cnblogs.com/zeusro/p/4461808.html

[2] 月薪集中8k-17k，跳槽率不足四成，Java稳居榜首… https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/711520388

[3] Get up to speed with .NET: What new for .NET Conf 2022 https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/17372/ In 2013, I registered my Blog Garden (博客园) account. My first professional programming language was C#.