These discussions inevitably end up as a flame war sooner or later.
Regardless, i actually compared Java with .NET and their web frameworks as a part of my bachelors', everything from synthetic benchmarks for encryption and data processing and transformations, to things like shuffling JSON around. Now, it's all in Latvian and was a number of years ago, so it's not entirely relevant at this point, but i did have some tangible findings.
In short:
- both Java and .NET (then Core) are inconsistent in their performance - there are certain things which are slower in one technology than other by not using external optimized libraries. For example, Java had problems with writing deeply nested dynamically generated JSON with JavaEE libraries (now Jakarta), whereas .NET Core had problems with handling large amounts of text
- their performance was largely comparable in most other tests, neither was faster by a factor of 10, like you'd see with Python and Ruby compared to either
- thus, it's largely a matter of choosing the actual frameworks that you'll want to utilize properly and consider both the job market and business factors (familiarity with the tech stack, job market etc.)
- in summary, they're close enough for it to not be a technical decision most of the time in real world circumstances (save for a few exceptions), but rather is a decision that depends on social elements
Since then:
- i don't believe that the observation of them being "close enough" has changed much, both in legacy code and otherwise
- .NET Core and now .NET 6 has improved bunches with its runtime; Core was so successful it's essentially the future of the platform (i feel bad for developers who'll be tricked into working on legacy code with the old .NET and IIS, versus the new one and Kestrel)
- JDK has improved bunches with its runtime and GC; the runtime situation is a bit complicated and cumbersome, considering the OP's article, but overall it's pretty usable, especially with frameworks like Quarkus
If you care about benchmarks and vaguely realistic performance comparisons in the current year, simply have a look at the TechEmpower benchmarks:
https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r20&hw=...If you jump around the different tabs that compare which frameworks do what better, on average:
- .NET is better for plain text
- .NET is noticeably better for data updates
- Java is noticeably better for JSON serialization
- Java is noticeably better for single DB queries
- Java is noticeably better for multiple DB queries
- as for cached queries and other use cases, there's more variance
- neither is better than the other for it to matter a lot
These are probably better than me linking the bachelors' because it's done in a better controlled environment, with more resources, and a lot of people contributing to the source code of the benchmarks:
https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/tree/mast...In short, you're not necessarily wrong - there have indeed been great improvements to the .NET platform and it's good to see it finally being a capable and performant tech stack that you can use on *nix. But you're also not right: Java is getting similar attention, even though it's still lagging behind a few years in regards to "having its stuff together" (e.g. going from Oracle JDK to a more stable model + the JDK 8 to newer version shift, which is similarly painful with old .NET versions).
To lighten the mood, i'd consider suggesting that anyone also have a look at Go, which is similarly performant and allows you to build runtime independent executables by default, which is easier than in either .NET or Java. It's also pretty easy to write and has seen good use for the development of tools, since its startup time is a tad better than either that of Java or .NET as well. Here's the three compared: https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r20&hw=...