What features should Java 7 onwards have to encourage switching from C#? [closed]

Answer 1

I think, choice between Java and C# is not a question of language features, but a question of platform and ecosystem choice.

So, I doubt that any new syntactic sugar in Java or C# can lead to a significant amount of switchers between the platforms.

After all, JVM world has Scala and many language-sensitive developers are using it in some way.

Answer 2

linq, lambda, anonymous types

Answer 3

Let's be clear that we need to distinguish between Java and the JVM. I actually switched from C# to Java, but I admit it was not because of Java's amazing language features! In my very humble opinion, C# is the better language, and CLR is the perhaps a more elegant VM. However, even with Mono, you're not writing applications that run everywhere!

I think the greatest argument for Java is the amazing community it has. This is where the cutting edge technology is being developed, not at Sun (now Oracle). The Java community has consistently been the leader in developing Enterprise technologies. For instance, how long did it take Microsoft to provide a DI Framework? Where's AOP in .NET? When I start a .NET project, my foundation is Spring.NET, a Java port. When I need ORM, it's NHibernate. Need a testing framework? NUnit. I realize there are other OSS projects for the .NET platform, but their numbers and support from Microsoft are laughable compared to the Java community.

Answer 4

Momentum. I have done a lot of development on both platforms. I'm enjoying the .NET side more because of the way the C# language is evolving. Java's evolution seems to be more a reaction to C# than an actual vision. So I think the best thing for Java to do is ignore .NET and create something new of its own.

Answer 5

Properties!

Anonymous objects are nice too

Answer 6

Continuations, like Scala (on top of the rest) would be good too, for agents development.