Alternative to VB.net ?

[Joacim Andersson]

I would not expect Android Java to be portable mainly because Android applications follow a specific model rather similar actually (amazingly?) to the model used by WinRT appplications. This is not how a "desktop" application's flow commences at all.

So you agree that Java isn't portable on the largest growing platform in the world on which you just as well could develop your programs using .Net?

Conventional Java desktop (WIMP) applications and command line applications can be quite portable though.

Yawn.... Who cares? Nobody has during the last 10 years...

It is quite true that every platform has differences that need attention if your program is to "look right" and act as users expect it to. Of course at the same time in question threads here people reveal that they routinely break Windows Guidelines left and right anyway even using Microsoft tools.

Yupp, that's my point; you need to engage in the platform you develop for if you want to be successful. That people have broken guidelines is just proof of that point, how successful have they've been?

The biggest advantage Java has is that the language itself can take you anywhere. You aren't locked into a dying platform (WinPhone, WinRT, and Win8).

My point is that you cant! If you want to be successful on any platform you have to obey to the API of that specific platform. If you truly think that all Windows platforms are dying then I would sincerely advise you to make the move and change to the next success, if you think you know what that is.

I know Java and I've developed in that language since it appeared almost 18 years ago, that fact have never however driven me away from the MS platform nor hindered me from learning the .Net platform after I learned Java. I do some development in Python (though I have to say that that is not very much on a professional level). I make a pretty good living developing mainly on the Windows platform but I'm very well aware that that might change however I do not think that that change would be to Java. No way, no chance! If there will be a change then it will be a change but Java is most likely not the answer for that change.

Edit: Even though everything I said above is a direct response to dilettante I hope you understand that this is in no way an attack on him personally.