Preface: I am not a microsoft fan, or even really a C# fan, but: having used both languages C# is nothing like java except in the most superficial of ways. I'm just amused that the caretakers of java took half a decade to adopt a lot of proven useful features. I wish they'd steal more.

C# is more similar to Java than any other language.

(Because you said so)

(Don't worry about, you know, backing up your point or anything silly like that. That might require that you know what you're talking about.)

Gosh, aren't you a pleasant fellow to deal with? Try to assume good faith.

I'll bite. C# is syntacticly and idiomatically more similar to Java than any other language. I'm sure how I can prove this, beyond saying "look at them!" – is there a counter example I'm missing?

They still need to steal the properties so we can remove the getter/setter and the local type inference from c#.

I must admit that except for this two missing features, I'm quite happy with the java 8 release in term of features.

It's still just too much boilerplate to define and use immutable types. Named parameters would help a lot. Something like Scala's case classes would help even more, and along with them, some kind of pattern matching.

Take a look at Project Lombok: http://projectlombok.org/

A bit hacky, but it works.