Ok, there's several posts about whats good/bad about both of these languages, this isn't one of those. At the end of the day it doesn't matter which technology is the best, but which ones are going to employ you. About a year ago, I think there were many more Java jobs here in Jacksonville (FL) then there were C# (.NET) jobs. I've noticed that there has been an increasing need for C# developers here, can't really say about the Java positions though. Recently I've been playing around with the blog search engine technorati.com, they have some really cool features. If you've never been there you should give it a shot. One of the features is to chart the number of blog entries over a period of time, based on keywords. To view the graph of MSBuild related blogs click on the link below

http://technorati.com/chart/%22MSBuild%22#taglink

I decided to compare the results of a search of "C#" and "Java", and I was really surprised to see the results. Below you can see the images that I saw. Note: These images are static and not updating.

From the technorati.com site it stated that there was 668,373 Java related posts and 17,100,527 C# posts! That is an incredible difference. There could be a few reasons for the difference:

1. Java people arn't blogging as much
2. Java people arn't registering with technorati.com as much as the C# folk
3. There is something wrong with the technorati.com processor

Since this is a simple keyword search I think we can safely assume that (3) is not the culprit. I think its really a combinition of (1) and (2). Another aspect there are many Java related blog entries that don't actually have the word Java in it. But I'm sure the same goes for C#. Previously when I was doing mostly Java work, I thought one of the cool things about Java was the community effort. With the open-source side and all. I thought that C# (.NET) would lack this for sure. But now that I know better, I know that it certainly is not like that. I think the community effort for C# (.NET) is just as strong, if not stronger, then the Java side.

I'm not sure what the significance these number have, but it certainly does make be happy to be in the C# camp. :)

To get the live chart for C# visit: http://technorati.com/chart/%22C%23%22#taglink
To get the live chart for Java visti: http://technorati.com/chart/%22Java%22#taglink

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

A few weeks ago I had to write a JAXB bindings file, this is an xml file that describes customizations to Java xml bindings. I started by just typing these in by hand, but then quickly realized how painful it was becoming. Since I was faced with creating a fairly large bindings file, I had to come up with a better way to do this. I decided to use Visual Studio to create this file with Intellisense. To enable intellisense your xml file must have an xmlns namespace specified. This is how Visual Studio matches the file you are creating with the correct xsd file to drive Intellisense. Since Visual Studio obviously doesn't ship with the xsd for JAXB bindings files, I had to find it. I don't remember where I found it, but it is at the bottom of this post for your convenience. You simply place the xsd file in the directory: %Program Files%Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Xml\Schemas
You may have to restart Visual Studio, can't remember. But after that you should have Intellisense for the file that you are working on!

Here is an image of using Visual Studio with Intellisense for the JAXB bindings file.

I don't know if Eclipse supports anything like this. There is probably a plugin somewhere.

bindingschema_1_0.xsd (16.23 KB)

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi