I'll preface this by saying I haven't ever done work on the Microsoft stack, so take this with a grain of salt.

Community support: Java tends to have a more active community (and much more diverse universe of new open source projects) than .Net (related to below).

Difficulty level: I'd say the Java/Spring stack is more difficult because Java developers tend to use more community projects and have to know which ones to choose in which circumstances (e.g. what logging framework to use? What database connection pooling library to use? What testing framework to use). That being said, most decisions you have to make have choices that are vastly more popular than others. My impression is that .NET guys use stuff from the standard library almost exclusively. If it's not provided there, it's a problem they never thought to solve or maybe write their own (usually the former).

Career prospects: I'll get hate for this probably, but Java/Spring has more jobs than .Net. .NET Core even more so because it's new. Most .NET jobs out there are going to be not Core, and not on anything other than Windows. LinkedIn search for jobs in United States shows 97,103 for Java and 36,448 for C#. That's not to say some individual city might not have more .NET than Java, but by and large Java is bigger. Also, .NET is not dying at the same pace as say Ruby on Rails (sorry Rails fans). I'd say it's ticking very slowly lower, maybe even holding steady. I wouldn't say you're screwed career-wise if you choose .NET. C# is also pretty similar to Java from what I've seen, and I know professionals that have transitioned to Java (though interestingly, I don't know any that did the reverse). Several companies have basically no .NET footprint, for example, Amazon, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter all have Java, but basically no C#.

Specialized fields: Neither Spring or .Net are going to be a thing in a field like data science. That's exclusively Python (some R) for the most part. The only exception being that there is some Java in Hadoop, and Scala in Spark (which runs on the JVM). But I think those are generally more for data products being created, and not data science work. I'm also under the impression this is increasingly less the case than historically. Some other specialties might make Java useful, for example Android development.

In short, Java is the COBOL of the modern enterprise (which is both a good and bad thing). I recommend it to anyone over .NET, but not for technical reasons. It's for reasons related to the questions you asked. There are actually reasons I think CLR and C# are actually better from a technical perspective than Java (unsurprisingly, since they had the benefit of hindsight). But that's not what you were asking about...

Spring boot helps you creating microservices in hours, not days and there is a very active community around it with amazing integrations. Check one of the tutorials maybe. At least here in Germany, the job market will be better for Spring Boot as well, there are a lot more companies using Java then C#.

ASP.NET Core is pretty new while spring boot is very old but with a different name. Spring boot is just a pack of spring packages which make your life easier. I also believe that java community is way stronger than c# community... You can do your job in both frameworks and it's up to you what you choose after-all you're going to work on the project/lead it ... but whatever you choose.. after a few days of investment stick with your decision because in both frameworks you'll encounter challenges :)

I’ll echo what others have said here with a few twists.

I have experience with both platforms including Micronaut, a relatively new kid on the block. It all depends on your near term goal. If it is to make money, sure Java jobs pay more generally because there is more hassles when dealing with the entire ecosystem. Like someone said earlier, you have to make a decision at almost every stage of the development cycle from the IDE, dependency resolution framework, logging, serialization, microservice framework etc. There is just too much choice which some may argue is an advantage while others may argue is a distraction and productivity killer. At the end of the day you can build solid systems with both frameworks.

Coming to ASP Core, yes I also agree that options are more streamlined. You’ll be using Visual Studio or Visual Studio code. For dependency management, you’ll be using Nuget. But I disagree with one of the comments above about the lack of choice. In some aspects .NET actually has more choice believe it or not for example choice of ORM. There is entity framework, nhibernate, dapper etc. For J2ee, hibernate reigns supreme although you have JPA. For dependency injection you have many IoC containers like unity, castle Windsor in .NET while you have Guice and maybe a Spring based implementation.

Also C# is technically a better language that Java. That’s not questionable as has also been stated above. Many things are done right obviously by avoiding some of the mistakes made in the underlying architecture surrounding the Java programming language. That’s why Microsoft created c# to begin with. The language is a lot cleaner and allows you to focus on learning core principles and nail down fundamental OO with emphasis on good design. I find too many distractions in the Java ecosystem which takes me away from understanding the core problem I am trying to solve.

So as you can this is not an easy decision and as someone has stated there’s work to do regardless of what technology choice you make.

If your sole purpose is to make a higher base salary, sure pick Spring Boot. If you want to quickly deliver something and iterate, pick ASP Core. I personally use c# for all private projects and proving concepts even though my employer is a Java shop. It allows me to stay focused on solving the problem and not constantly wrestle with issues such as Gradle dependency resolution glitches in IntelliJ.

Given that you can transfer skills from .NET to J2ee I recommend guys to pick up ASP get a couple of services to get a feel web development as you can still get jobs in Java even with that experience. Companies don’t care these days. In fact a lot of companies are going to Go so there’s that too.

Depends on your immediate term goal.

Having worked with many J2EE database applications in the past, I now turn to Django if I can and the project allows it as it is so quick to get up and running. It has a logical workflow and organized structure and it comes with a high level of security (if you import the appropriate backends). If you are wanting to incorporate python-based data processing (or cython), it is relatively easy to write a backend plugin. I have found it more stable with updates than other frameworks (particularly compared to the NPM world such as React which so often descends into dependency hell when a version of something is updated). One hassle worth mentioning is the database migrations support which can sometimes mess up during development but there are workarounds. With a React frontend, you would be using the Django REST Framework (https://www.django-rest-framework.org/) so you may find that you have to overwrite a lot of the methods here as the defaults are fairly basic CRUD operations which don't really support nested relationships very well. I don't have any experience with .Net so I can't give a comparison except of course, the obvious one, portability, as Python is platform-independent. PS, I would recommend Vue over React also for a well organized front-end.

You can get done what you want with just about any modern framework and language.

Django is fast and easy to learn but as your website grows you will need more and more community apps whose release cycles do not keep up with Django. Unless you are willing to work on the community apps, Django may not be for you.

Compare the active community sizes of Django apps to Ruby on Rails apps and you'll see very active communities with Ruby on Rails and small Django communities. Don't switch to Ruby on Rails though--it is a small, dying community of enthusiasts.

ASP.NET Core is a great backend framework, the community is large and you can always find answers; however, according to the StackOverflow developer survey, it is not desirable for the majority of programmers. I still use it though because my background evolved from C to C++ and then to C#. I also like the Microsoft world.

I've programmed a lot using Angular and some React but am switching to Vue.js which is much easier to learn and faster to code in. Be sure to use TypeScript with Vue.js. Just watch the video on the Vue home page to see how fast he can code using Vue.

But do you really want to code a website from scratch? If not, try WordPress Elementor. It may save you tons of time.

For mobile, use Google Flutter. In my 35 years of professional programming I've never seen anything more elegant, easy to learn, well documented and beautiful than Flutter. From one a single base you can target both Android and IOS and soon Web. You can also develop in Android Studio which means your screen real estate requirements are small so you don't need two monitors.

I find myself in the opposite boat, I have made commercial websites with Django and now find myself learning ASP.NET. My recommendation comes with the following caveats... regardless of direction the learning will happen. Django is a very battery included framework, so the initial process will be painless, I found that documentation and support for more advanced use cases to be fairly easy to get support.

I personally found Django pretty nice to work with.

Go with the ASP.NET Core. It is a very mature technology now and there are tons of documentation, tutorials and support you can find online. Also ASP.NET Core Web API plays quite well with the React. It is easy to implement the entire back-end in .NET Core (APIs, authentication, database access layer...) and if you need any third party package, I'm pretty sure you will find and implement in a form of a NuGet package. Who knows, maybe one day you'll need to create a mobile app and with a fully functional Web API, it would be more-less easy task to build a mobile app on top of it.

I recommend you use a framework such as Firebase instead of implementing your own backend server for the website.

I found that Firebase enables me to build websites more quickly since it takes care of the backend for me so most of my development time is building the front-end (using React in your case).

If you're going to learn Python anyway, Django project will boost your learning process. Since you're going to use React , you only neet to create REST API. Basic API can be created with Django rather easy.

you can achieve what you want with both. but for me, the obvious choice is Aspnet core. the main reason is being the easiness of writing code in a multi-threading manner & ORM. the Django ORM is ugly as hell that I don't even want to look into its code. I did a couple of projects with Django and I wish I never did it. the amount of nuances was so much that after we delivered the projects I rejected any new Django project. I know people still using that and getting projects done but it's not a clever choice when there are easier choices out there.

moreover, after the latest upgrade, the Aspnet core 3 is the fastest and best of framework in 2020.

I always use Django on my projects. It is really easy and friendly fro the developer. It also comes with an inbuilt admin panel where you can manage all your models (tables), Django has a great authentication and authorization system, and it provides a great and powerful URL dispatcher, suitable for your needs. Furthermore, you can use a called django-pyodbc that is coded specifically for Microsoft SQL Server, and the SQL dialects for SQL Server ("T-SQL") and Access ("Access SQL"). However, I would not recommend using an Access DataBase with any web application's backend. Of course, it depends if you explicitly have Microsoft as your main tech stack.

Hope I helped you, and good luck with your project!

Would recommend Asp.net core with angular, It would integrate fine. I have experienced Django its good for fast, short span projects. But when it comes to speed, maintainability Asp .net is a winner. Though you can use angular/react in both frameworks. Your application consists of crud operations so you can have a choice based upon availability of resource, maintenance and time

Short answer, ASP.NET because of #2. I think the Microsoft stack, now and in the future will be easier to sync with Microsoft Access. I haven't done extensive research but usually Microsoft office apps work well with the MSFT stack. BUT I personally prefer Django.