>>18
I believe it's been criticized for being a cut-and-paste job—that is, the language specification was Ctrl-X/Ctrl-V'd out of the Java spec.
Honestly, there probably isn't anyone here sufficiently qualified to talk about both except in the most general terms. I've got some Java experience but no .NET, and I bet the other 80% of the people here (there are probably only like 10 people total—you, me, two Haskell trolls, three lisp trolls, and three spammers) just wouldn't dare dignify Microsoft with their heavenly presence.