I work in a small software house in Italy. We write mainly business
management software for small and medium companies. We are
reorganizing our development department, and have to choose between
Java and dotNET. The chef doesn't want to use both languages, as I've
tried to suggest. He says that dotNET is better than Java, because you
can write a complete desktop application in half the time you need
with Java, because Microsoft provides a lot of visual tools that
automate the coding process. Is that true? I don't agree, for example
with netBeans can you as well visually design your user interface,
make or buy your components, therefore I'm looking for a better way to
arguee my opinion.

Answer lies in the requirements.  .NET is becoming increasingly
popular and is defintely have been getting good reviews but it still
have long ways to go in terms of heavy weight middle tier processing
and stability of mig ranage environment.  You are right that MS
technologies are fast for point solution and will cut down the time it
takes to create the front ends but if you are designing an application
need to be multichannel enabled, most adopted, easy to configure and
interoperable on any hardware / OS, J2EE will be a better choice.  I
think the advise here is to make a balance between the two and now
with eclipse and all these open source framework from apachae /
jakarta frontend development is quite fast.

It is complete BS that you can develop a desktop app in half the time
in .net vs java.  The answer is "It depends".  It depends on how
familiar you are with the particular environment vs how familiar you
are with the other one. (both have some powerful visual development
environments)  It depends on how well you know what it is you are
trying to do and how familiar the programmer is with the domain
knowledge of the topic.

What do the developers know and what are they familiar with?  That
will have a much stronger influence on how fast things get completed
(and the quality of the tasks)

Also politically (although you might not want to say this), if a
particular language is foisted on a developer who is unfamiliar and
unwilling to use the language it takes responsibility away from the
developer to do a good job.  Heck its the fault of the language.  If
the developer team is responsible for solving the business problem
(however that happens within some reasonable constraints) then they
will be more inclined to make sure it works come hell or high water.

Hello alphaville76-ga,
  You heard it right. .Net provides a very easy way to build
prototypes, applications, frameworks, components, web applications,
webservices etc very quickly and efficiently. I am not saying this
just to convince you. It is my personal experience of 5 years.
  There are many things that you can count on and many parameters that
can prove this fact. Some you can find at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/java/compare/default.aspx
  Apart from this, the support you get on .Net from Microsoft and also
newsgroups is tremendous. Code samples are ample if you want to try
something new. Check codeproject.com for example. There are umpteen
number of sites that have forums to help you out if you are stuck.
Even mirosoft has forums under forums.microsoft.com where MS employees
will answer most of your questions.
  If you have already written some java apps, you can migrate them to
.Net and viceversa is not true. If you are planning for porting your
application on linux try mono http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page.
  For better future prospects, go for .Net than J2EE. In case you have
to interact with legacy applications written on Java or any other
platforms, expose necessary end points via web services and you can
very easily consume in .Net.
  Hope that helps.
  Pooran

I concur with globalthinker, .Net is okay. But Java will take you much
further. Keep in mind, if you go with .Net you have to get completely
"in bed" with Microsoft. This means, that all your developers MUST use
Microsoft products and MUST deploy on Windows servers. In Java, each
member of the team can use whatever workstation they are comfortable
with: Linux, Windows, Sun, Macintosh et al. Java runs the same on all
and each can test and deploy the app locally.

Final and important question, does .Net support Ajax? That's the
future of web applications and  deserves serious consideration.

Piko

101 Reasons Why Java is Better than .NET (Reloaded)
http://www.manageability.org/manageabilityWiki/WhyJavaIsBetterThanDotNet