Ajax vs. Ordinary Java

Yakov Fain wrote an interesting article: A Cup of AJAX? Nay, Just Regular Java Please at SYS-CON DEUTSCHLAND.

I can agree that big Internet guys [Google] can and should invest some serious dough into supporting screen-refresh-on-mouse-move in HTML-based screens. But when it comes to a regular Intranet business application, when the users/browsers/platforms are known and when the cost of the project development matters, I’d stay with a fat client written in Java, or (if you like a fancy GUI) Macromedia’s Flash or Flex.

This article caught my eye and I’m including it simply for your perusal, but I disagree with him. For people who have been developing Java Applets for the past um-teen years, then this argument holds a lot of ground, however for people like myself Ajax is the perfect answer. The application that I am working on is primarily developed in C. The whole web application portion of the program is an add-on and soon needs to be automatically generated by the C application. Ajax opens the perfect door for this type of functionality.

I’m curious to hear what you all think. Java or Ajax?