Honestly for me the main difference are the IDEs. I started with Eclipse and the jump to IntelliJ was huge/great. But using Visual Studio was always a better experience.

Your point about the difference between the languages is definitely true re: Java 6. Java stagnated for a few years there while C# was improving with things I'd actually use. Java 8 is definitely an improvement and ultimately I think it would boil down to ease of use and familiarity when comparing them.

One thing I don't miss about java is server configuration. At the same time, I'm definitely relying on IIS doing things behind the scenes I probably don't know about.