Functionality wise, there is not a lot of difference between the two when used for a web application. However at higher level following can be seen as major differences between .Net and Java -
- Each of these has different origin where Java is from Sun, .Net is from Microsoft.
- Java is a language plus a runtime, .Net is a runtime framework that supports multiple languages, Visual Basic and C# (the .Net language most similar to Java) among them.
- C# is very similar to Java but a few years younger, and a bit nicer in some respects - it has a slightly simpler syntax for some common constructs.
- Java is more platform independent, it runs on several operating systems including Windows, Mac and Linux. .Net is primarily for Windows. Although the open source project Mono is developing a multi-platform runtime for .Net, so this is less of an issue than it used to be.
- .Net has a more integrated development environment, as the IDE, runtime and server all come from Microsoft as a standard package, while Java is based on third-party tool and server providers. It used to be the case that the .Net development environment was clearly superior, but the difference is smaller these days.
One can say that Java gives more flexibility, as there are more server- and IDE-providers to choose from, at the cost of some extra overhead for the developer to get the different pieces to work together.
For desktop applications, .Net naturally has an edge in Windows integration because of ownership of microsoft.
