The real problem with C# is that it is still basically Windows-specific. Yes, Mono is out there, but have you actually tried to build a Mono app without using Xamarin? Have you looked at what the Xamarin licenses cost? Once your project reaches a certain level of complexity, you have to pay them outrageous fees. And even with it, it still feels like you're operating something that could keel over at any second. The ecosystem there is just terrible, which is a shame because F# is such a great language.

The thing that makes Java so great as a platform is that there are so many totally reasonable tools that you can just download and use. Eclipse, IntelliJ (community version, which is still pretty good), the myriad of excellent alternative JVM languages, all freely available and cross platform.

A lot of the things you can do with LINQ you can do in Java now there are lambdas and method references. e.g. http://benjiweber.co.uk/blog/2013/12/28/typesafe-database-in...

Properties you could simulate with lambdas now. something like Property<String> name = get(() -> name).set(name -> this.name = name);

You would lose all the existing framework support that assumes getters and setters doing that though.

Some of the generics failure will likely be fixed in 9 (Primitive specialisation). Other things are not as bad as some people think (At least generic supertype params are available at runtime)

I agree C# from pure language point of view had a better road map and unlike Java which was sort of kind of run by committee did not need colossal consensus from disparate groups for new language features.

JVM vs CLR its a different story - I am hearing Microsoft in negotiation with Xamarin to buy/invest, that may make Mono get feature/implementation parity with CLR. Till then JVM is the only thing close to platform agnostic environment in town.

I would say that C#'s language evolution is too closely tied with the terrible frameworks as well as legacy they have to support.