What are major differences between C# and Java?

I just want to clarify one thing. This is not a question on which one is better, that part I leave to someone else to discuss. I don't care about it. I've been asked this question on my job interview and I thought it might be useful to learn a bit more.

These are the ones I could come up with:

• Java is "platform independent". Well nowadays you could say there is the Mono project so C# could be considered too but I believe it is a bit exaggerating. Why? Well, when a new release of Java is done it is simultaneously available on all platforms it supports, on the other hand how many features of C# 3.0 are still missing in the Mono implementation? Or is it really CLR vs. JRE that we should compare here?
• Java doesn't support events and delegates. As far as I know.
• In Java all methods are virtual
• Development tools: I believe there isn't such a tool yet as Visual Studio. Especially if you've worked with team editions you'll know what I mean.

Please add others you think are relevant.

Update: Just popped up my mind, Java doesn't have something like custom attributes on classes, methods etc. Or does it?

Comparing Java 7 and C# 3

(Some features of Java 7 aren't mentioned here, but the using statement advantage of all versions of C# over Java 1-6 has been removed.)

Not all of your summary is correct:

• In Java methods are virtual by default but you can make them final. (In C# they're sealed by default, but you can make them virtual.)
• There are plenty of IDEs for Java, both free (e.g. Eclipse, Netbeans) and commercial (e.g. IntelliJ IDEA)

Beyond that (and what's in your summary already):

• Generics are completely different between the two; Java generics are just a compile-time "trick" (but a useful one at that). In C# and .NET generics are maintained at execution time too, and work for value types as well as reference types, keeping the appropriate efficiency (e.g. a List<byte> as a byte[] backing it, rather than an array of boxed bytes.)
• C# doesn't have checked exceptions
• Java doesn't allow the creation of user-defined value types
• Java doesn't have operator and conversion overloading
• Java doesn't have iterator blocks for simple implemetation of iterators
• Java doesn't have anything like LINQ
• Partly due to not having delegates, Java doesn't have anything quite like anonymous methods and lambda expressions. Anonymous inner classes usually fill these roles, but clunkily.
• Java doesn't have expression trees
• C# doesn't have anonymous inner classes
• C# doesn't have Java's inner classes at all, in fact - all nested classes in C# are like Java's static nested classes
• Java doesn't have static classes (which don't have any instance constructors, and can't be used for variables, parameters etc)
• Java doesn't have any equivalent to the C# 3.0 anonymous types
• Java doesn't have implicitly typed local variables
• Java doesn't have extension methods
• Java doesn't have object and collection initializer expressions
• The access modifiers are somewhat different - in Java there's (currently) no direct equivalent of an assembly, so no idea of "internal" visibility; in C# there's no equivalent to the "default" visibility in Java which takes account of namespace (and inheritance)
• The order of initialization in Java and C# is subtly different (C# executes variable initializers before the chained call to the base type's constructor)
• Java doesn't have properties as part of the language; they're a convention of get/set/is methods
• Java doesn't have the equivalent of "unsafe" code
• Interop is easier in C# (and .NET in general) than Java's JNI
• Java and C# have somewhat different ideas of enums. Java's are much more object-oriented.
• Java has no preprocessor directives (#define, #if etc in C#).
• Java has no equivalent of C#'s ref and out for passing parameters by reference
• Java has no equivalent of partial types
• C# interfaces cannot declare fields
• Java has no unsigned integer types
• Java has no language support for a decimal type. (java.math.BigDecimal provides something like System.Decimal - with differences - but there's no language support)
• Java has no equivalent of nullable value types
• Boxing in Java uses predefined (but "normal") reference types with particular operations on them. Boxing in C# and .NET is a more transparent affair, with a reference type being created for boxing by the CLR for any value type.

This is not exhaustive, but it covers everything I can think of off-hand.

The following is a great in depth reference by Dare Obasanjo on the differences between C# and Java. I always find myself referring to this article when switching between the two.

http://www.25hoursaday.com/CsharpVsJava.html

C# has automatic properties which are incredibly convenient and they also help to keep your code cleaner, at least when you don't have custom logic in your getters and setters.

Features of C# Absent in Java • C# includes more primitive types and the functionality to catch arithmetic exceptions.

• Includes a large number of notational conveniences over Java, many of which, such as operator overloading and user-defined casts, are already familiar to the large community of C++ programmers.

• Event handling is a "first class citizen"—it is part of the language itself.

• Allows the definition of "structs", which are similar to classes but may be allocated on the stack (unlike instances of classes in C# and Java).

• C# implements properties as part of the language syntax.

• C# allows switch statements to operate on strings.

• C# allows anonymous methods providing closure functionality.

• C# allows iterator that employs co-routines via a functional-style yield keyword.

• C# has support for output parameters, aiding in the return of multiple values, a feature shared by C++ and SQL.

• C# has the ability to alias namespaces.

• C# has "Explicit Member Implementation" which allows a class to specifically implement methods of an interface, separate from its own class methods. This allows it also to implement two different interfaces which happen to have a method of the same name. The methods of an interface do not need to be public; they can be made to be accessible only via that interface.

• C# provides integration with COM.

• Following the example of C and C++, C# allows call by reference for primitive and reference types.

Features of Java Absent in C#

• Java's strictfp keyword guarantees that the result of floating point operations remain the same across platforms.

• Java supports checked exceptions for better enforcement of error trapping and handling.

Another good resource is http://www.javacamp.org/javavscsharp/ This site enumerates many examples that ilustrate almost all the differences between these two programming languages.

About the Attributes, Java has Annotations, that work almost the same way.

Generics:

With Java generics, you don't actually get any of the execution efficiency that you get with .NET because when you compile a generic class in Java, the compiler takes away the type parameter and substitutes Object everywhere. For instance if you have a Foo<T> class the java compiler generates Byte Code as if it was Foo<Object>. This means casting and also boxing/unboxing will have to be done in the "background".

I've been playing with Java/C# for a while now and, in my opinion, the major difference at the language level are, as you pointed, delegates.

Please go through the link given below msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms836794.aspx It covers both the similarity and difference between C# and java