Enjoy!

The first is “foreach” and “indexers”. The code is so much cleaner when using these. Years ago when I did PHP work, PHP OOP hadn’t yet come of age and everything was arrays, indexes, and foreach loops. I got so comfortable when them that I couldn’t conceive of a language not having them.

Another big C# advantage is delegates. The Java code I’m working with has dozens of observer pattern implementations that Java uses instead of delegates and events. I can refactor away many Java classes and file using 1-3 line long delegate and event C# code.

The final huge one is generics. It may just be the code base I’m working with, but most Java I come across relies on native primitives to do all the work and un/boxing “object”s when another class else is used. This is horrible! Type-safety aside, it’s just not as descriptive and intuitive as it could be. I only need to know that a variable is of type List to know exactly what it holds. I don’t have to remember or reference how it was used. All that casting feels so cumbersome and ugly to me now.

After reading all of your posts – and they’ve been wonderful – the biggest reason I stick with C# instead of Java though has gone unmentioned: the IDE. I think highly of C# and love using it. I enjoy the features, the syntactic sugar, and the tremendous community. In the end though, the IDE alone would keep me using it even if it sucked as a language.

To me, using Eclipse to code with Java feels like a sturdy SUV going through the mountains. It’s rough, it’s tough, it can handle anything capably, but it’s still a really bumpy ride and my knuckles are white the whole time.

C# + Visual Studio feels like a yuppie SUV going down the highway. I’m every bit as safe, the road is smooth and I’m gliding along. I’ll still never confuse it for a sportscar or motorcycle but I’d much rather be sailing down the highway than through the mountains.