Actually, J2EE (December 12, 1999, if the Great Wiki is to believed) predates .NET (February 13, 2002, same source).<p>.NET and J2EE (or C# and Java) never really replaced each other--at best, .NET was MS&#x27;s attempt to upgrade the MFC&#x2F;COM stuff to the Java VM world after J++ fell apart. They&#x27;re more or less the same model, one&#x27;s just the Windows Server flavor while the other is the Linux&#x2F;Unix flavor.