Go go java! ... play catch-up with C#!

December 17, 2008 | 1 Minute Read
This post was originally posted on my old blog.

I am reading Stephen Colebourne's JDK 7 language changes - Devoxx votes!.

At the devoxx conference people voted on possible future features of the Java language.

As a developer with a .NET background, I can't help to compare with C# ...

Properties: In C# since 1.0

Null handling: In C# 2.0 with nullable types and according operators

List/Map syntax: In C# since 1.0 with Indexers

Extension methods: In C# since 3.0. See here, but C# is going much further with LINQ

Method pointers: In C# since 1.0 with delegates. Later extended with anonymous delegates and Lambda Expressions

Multiline Strings: In C# since 1.0 with the @-syntax

Infer generics: In C# since 3.0 with general type inference

... go go Java! C# is not resting ... 4.0 is in the pipes, offering another truckload of innovation (dynamic capabilities, co-contravariant features for generics, optional parameters (small thumbs up for Java) and named parameters ...)

Update: The post is discussed at Hacker News.