What Are Major Differences Between C# and Java

What are major differences between C# and Java?

Comparing Java 7 and C# 3

(Some features of Java 7 aren't mentioned here, but the using statement advantage of all versions of C# over Java 1-6 has been removed.)

Not all of your summary is correct:

  • In Java methods are virtual by default but you can make them final. (In C# they're sealed by default, but you can make them virtual.)
  • There are plenty of IDEs for Java, both free (e.g. Eclipse, Netbeans) and commercial (e.g. IntelliJ IDEA)

Beyond that (and what's in your summary already):

  • Generics are completely different between the two; Java generics are just a compile-time "trick" (but a useful one at that). In C# and .NET generics are maintained at execution time too, and work for value types as well as reference types, keeping the appropriate efficiency (e.g. a List<byte> as a byte[] backing it, rather than an array of boxed bytes.)
  • C# doesn't have checked exceptions
  • Java doesn't allow the creation of user-defined value types
  • Java doesn't have operator and conversion overloading
  • Java doesn't have iterator blocks for simple implemetation of iterators
  • Java doesn't have anything like LINQ
  • Partly due to not having delegates, Java doesn't have anything quite like anonymous methods and lambda expressions. Anonymous inner classes usually fill these roles, but clunkily.
  • Java doesn't have expression trees
  • C# doesn't have anonymous inner classes
  • C# doesn't have Java's inner classes at all, in fact - all nested classes in C# are like Java's static nested classes
  • Java doesn't have static classes (which don't have any instance constructors, and can't be used for variables, parameters etc)
  • Java doesn't have any equivalent to the C# 3.0 anonymous types
  • Java doesn't have implicitly typed local variables
  • Java doesn't have extension methods
  • Java doesn't have object and collection initializer expressions
  • The access modifiers are somewhat different - in Java there's (currently) no direct equivalent of an assembly, so no idea of "internal" visibility; in C# there's no equivalent to the "default" visibility in Java which takes account of namespace (and inheritance)
  • The order of initialization in Java and C# is subtly different (C# executes variable initializers before the chained call to the base type's constructor)
  • Java doesn't have properties as part of the language; they're a convention of get/set/is methods
  • Java doesn't have the equivalent of "unsafe" code
  • Interop is easier in C# (and .NET in general) than Java's JNI
  • Java and C# have somewhat different ideas of enums. Java's are much more object-oriented.
  • Java has no preprocessor directives (#define, #if etc in C#).
  • Java has no equivalent of C#'s ref and out for passing parameters by reference
  • Java has no equivalent of partial types
  • C# interfaces cannot declare fields
  • Java has no unsigned integer types
  • Java has no language support for a decimal type. (java.math.BigDecimal provides something like System.Decimal - with differences - but there's no language support)
  • Java has no equivalent of nullable value types
  • Boxing in Java uses predefined (but "normal") reference types with particular operations on them. Boxing in C# and .NET is a more transparent affair, with a reference type being created for boxing by the CLR for any value type.

This is not exhaustive, but it covers everything I can think of off-hand.

What are the main differences between C# and Java?

Have a look at

Comparison of Java and C Sharp

Java vs C#/.NET

what are the main differences between a Java/C# static class?

Static classes in Java are one of three kinds of nested classes provided by the language (the other two being non-static nested classes and function-scoped classes).

Static classes of Java behave the same way that nested classes of C#: they have access to static members of the enclosing class, but cannot access instance members without an additional reference to the enclosing object. In contrast, non-static nested functions can access instance variables, but you need an enclosing instance in order to be instantiated.

What are the differences between Generics in C# and Java... and Templates in C++?

I'll add my voice to the noise and take a stab at making things clear:

C# Generics allow you to declare something like this.

List<Person> foo = new List<Person>();

and then the compiler will prevent you from putting things that aren't Person into the list.

Behind the scenes the C# compiler is just putting List<Person> into the .NET dll file, but at runtime the JIT compiler goes and builds a new set of code, as if you had written a special list class just for containing people - something like ListOfPerson.

The benefit of this is that it makes it really fast. There's no casting or any other stuff, and because the dll contains the information that this is a List of Person, other code that looks at it later on using reflection can tell that it contains Person objects (so you get intellisense and so on).

The downside of this is that old C# 1.0 and 1.1 code (before they added generics) doesn't understand these new List<something>, so you have to manually convert things back to plain old List to interoperate with them. This is not that big of a problem, because C# 2.0 binary code is not backwards compatible. The only time this will ever happen is if you're upgrading some old C# 1.0/1.1 code to C# 2.0

Java Generics allow you to declare something like this.

ArrayList<Person> foo = new ArrayList<Person>();

On the surface it looks the same, and it sort-of is. The compiler will also prevent you from putting things that aren't Person into the list.

The difference is what happens behind the scenes. Unlike C#, Java does not go and build a special ListOfPerson - it just uses the plain old ArrayList which has always been in Java. When you get things out of the array, the usual Person p = (Person)foo.get(1); casting-dance still has to be done. The compiler is saving you the key-presses, but the speed hit/casting is still incurred just like it always was.

When people mention "Type Erasure" this is what they're talking about. The compiler inserts the casts for you, and then 'erases' the fact that it's meant to be a list of Person not just Object

The benefit of this approach is that old code which doesn't understand generics doesn't have to care. It's still dealing with the same old ArrayList as it always has. This is more important in the java world because they wanted to support compiling code using Java 5 with generics, and having it run on old 1.4 or previous JVM's, which microsoft deliberately decided not to bother with.

The downside is the speed hit I mentioned previously, and also because there is no ListOfPerson pseudo-class or anything like that going into the .class files, code that looks at it later on (with reflection, or if you pull it out of another collection where it's been converted into Object or so on) can't tell in any way that it's meant to be a list containing only Person and not just any other array list.

C++ Templates allow you to declare something like this

std::list<Person>* foo = new std::list<Person>();

It looks like C# and Java generics, and it will do what you think it should do, but behind the scenes different things are happening.

It has the most in common with C# generics in that it builds special pseudo-classes rather than just throwing the type information away like java does, but it's a whole different kettle of fish.

Both C# and Java produce output which is designed for virtual machines. If you write some code which has a Person class in it, in both cases some information about a Person class will go into the .dll or .class file, and the JVM/CLR will do stuff with this.

C++ produces raw x86 binary code. Everything is not an object, and there's no underlying virtual machine which needs to know about a Person class. There's no boxing or unboxing, and functions don't have to belong to classes, or indeed anything.

Because of this, the C++ compiler places no restrictions on what you can do with templates - basically any code you could write manually, you can get templates to write for you.

The most obvious example is adding things:

In C# and Java, the generics system needs to know what methods are available for a class, and it needs to pass this down to the virtual machine. The only way to tell it this is by either hard-coding the actual class in, or using interfaces. For example:

string addNames<T>( T first, T second ) { return first.Name() + second.Name(); }

That code won't compile in C# or Java, because it doesn't know that the type T actually provides a method called Name(). You have to tell it - in C# like this:

interface IHasName{ string Name(); };
string addNames<T>( T first, T second ) where T : IHasName { .... }

And then you have to make sure the things you pass to addNames implement the IHasName interface and so on. The java syntax is different (<T extends IHasName>), but it suffers from the same problems.

The 'classic' case for this problem is trying to write a function which does this

string addNames<T>( T first, T second ) { return first + second; }

You can't actually write this code because there are no ways to declare an interface with the + method in it. You fail.

C++ suffers from none of these problems. The compiler doesn't care about passing types down to any VM's - if both your objects have a .Name() function, it will compile. If they don't, it won't. Simple.

So, there you have it :-)

Java and C#, how close are they?

You are asking several questions at once. Let me address them separately:



How similar Java and C#?

Both C# and Java drew from C/C++ (and Objective C, and others) to define their syntax. And both of them are compiled to an intermediate language.

This common origin makes the languages look similar in many levels, to the point that code in either language can be confused with the other by beginners; and also makes the runtime environment somewhat comparable. However, there are substantial differences in both design principles and how each language evolved that make working with each quite different; here are the most prominent ones:

On the syntax level, Java was influenced by Smalltalk, while C# tried to stay closer to C/C++ (eg: compare Java's extends and implements with C#'s : notation) and took a vague inspiration from VB on those concepts that weren't mappable to C/C++ (example: property syntax).

On the features level, C# 1 was definitely close to Java. Among the few differences they had, I'd highlight C#'s support for "unsafe" code (including pointers) and for delegates; and Java's controversial throws. This makes sense, since one of the goals of C# was to become an alternative to Java.

Many language features differ heavily on implementation details. For example, enums are very C'ish on C#, but are full objects in Java; or generics are implemented on the IL-level in C#, but in Java are dealt with via type erasure (neither is really close to C++'s templates besides syntax).

On the API level, they are worlds apart. C# relies on the .Net Framework, which was built on Microsoft's experience with the Visual Studio family of products (and thus is significantly Windows-oriented), while Java's Class Library was built, IIRC, from scratch, and heavily evolved over time (on these Swing days, does anyone remember AWT? I do).

Finally, it's worth mentioning that each of the languages has its own idioms, and its own community of supporters behind it.



If I learn Java, is learning C# almost
free? Or vice versa?

Neither. The key similarity is the basic syntax (semicolons, curly braces, array indexing, case-sensitiveness, etc), and you already have that from C/C++.



If I have to choose only one of the two languages, which would be better?

Short answer: flip a coin.
Long answer: it depends on your coding style and on what aspects of the language you value most. My best advise is to start by trying to learn both, until you feel that one of the languages pulls you more strongly than the other.

Alternatively, you can take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Java_and_C_Sharp.



Which has wider coverage in terms of programming language?

If you mean language built-in features, I'd say C# wins for a narrow margin. Most of the features that C# has and Java lacks are syntax sugar (although they together make a significant difference on the learning curve and on the way the language is used). I value really high C#'s operator overload and extension methods. Also, LINQ is quite an interesting concept, but it is essentially a declarative syntax for loops.

Hope this helps.

Differences between Java and C# and .NET

The most important bit is in "primarily intended for Windows".

If you only need to work on Windows, C# is likely to be a much better bet than Java. There's a better variety of visual styles which blend in well with Windows. It also makes interoperating with native code (e.g. bits of the Win32 API or COM libraries) easier than Java. Personally I prefer it as a language, but that's a different matter.

If you need to run on other platforms, I'd seriously consider Java. While Mono has quite a lot of momentum, it doesn't have the same degree of compatibility with .NET as Java does on the various platforms it supports.

So basically, weigh up the "may want to port" aspect very carefully - it's the driving factor in the decision, from my point of view. Once you've decided to do a port, it doesn't matter much if 90% of your customers are on Windows - it'll still need to work, and work well, for the remaining 10%.

Interface Implement differences in C# vs Java

You can create a callback implementation CreateCallback that has a other callback as constructor parameter successAction. This passed callback OnManagerCreated will be called in the OnCreated of CreateCallback.

Important Note: If you implement a Java interface, you have to inherit from Java.Lang.Object. Do not implement Handle and Dispose() on your own.

Activity

public class MyActivity : Activity 
{
private static BarcodeReader _barcodeReader;
private AidcManager _manager;
protected override void OnCreate(Bundle bundle)
{
base.OnCreate(bundle);
// Set our view from the "main" layout resource
SetContentView(Resource.Layout.Main);

CreateCallback callback = new CreateCallback(OnManagerCreated) { };
AidcManager.Create(this, callback);
}

private void OnManagerCreated(AidcManager manager)
{
_manager = manager;
_barcodeReader = manager.CreateBarcodeReader();
}
}

Callback implementation

public class CreateCallback : Java.Lang.Object, AidcManager.ICreatedCallback
{
private Action<AidcManager> _successAction;
public CreateCallback(Action<AidcManager> successAction)
{
_successAction = successAction;
}

public void OnCreated(AidcManager p0)
{
_successAction(p0);
}
}

Other possibility

You can also implement the interface directly in your activity class like

public class MyActivity : Activity, AidcManager.ICreatedCallback 
{
// ...
}

C# vs Java generics

streloksi's link does a great job of breaking down the differences. The quick and dirty summary though is ...

In terms of syntax and usage. The syntax is roughly the same between the languages. A few quirks here and there (most notably in constraints). But basically if you can read one, you can likely read/use the other.

The biggest difference though is in the implementation.

Java uses the notion of type erasure to implement generics. In short the underlying compiled classes are not actually generic. They compile down to Object and casts. In effect Java generics are a compile time artifact and can easily be subverted at runtime.

C# on the other hand, by virtue of the CLR, implement generics all they way down to the byte code. The CLR took several breaking changes in order to support generics in 2.0. The benefits are performance improvements, deep type safety verification and reflection.

Again the provided link has a much more in depth breakdown I encourage you to read

Java to C# Trying to learn and understand the differences between the two

Firstly, rand.NextDouble() in C# returns a number betwenn 0.0 and 1.0. Math.Round(rand.NextDouble()) will give you either 0 or 1, so by generating 40 random numbers you will get and array full of 0s and 1s.
To make the C# program do what your Java program does, you can use the following code:

numbers.Add(
Math.Round(
rand.NextDouble() * 100 - 1, 2));

Secondly, I guess you see something like

System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.Double]

in the output of your program. That's because a List in C# doesn't have a nice definition for ToString function, while ArrayList in Java does.
Actually, if instead of using ArrayList you use a standard double[] array in Java, you will get a similar 'non-informative' characters printed.

In C#, you can do the following:

string.Join(", ", numbers)

to make the output similar to Java's ArrayList.



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