When were enums added to the specification? I either don't remember them or was unable to figure them out, because I so would have used that in the last Java project I did.

Well, I don't know when they were added, but they were certainly in there as of 1.5. Follow the link above for the spec description of them.

Yep. Enums are part of the Java SE 5 spec. What's that you say? Don't I mean 1.5? Well, actually no. The 1.x notation is still around, but Sun did it's version magic and now: J2SE 1.5.x => Java SE 5 (Not 5.0) and JSEE 1.5.x => Java EE 5. All hail our less precise version lords.

My goodness. You remember your Pascal? I haven't touched it since freshman year. Well nigh 19 years ago.

Heh. I think I am slipping into "old fart" mode. Using phrases like "well nigh".

Of course not! I had to google for the appropriate Pascal syntax. :)

So Java's enumerated types are, indeed, pretty cool. Nonetheless, given the choice between Java and C#, I'll take C# almost every time. The primary, and most important reason: properties. Yeah, JavaBeans have a method naming convention for properties, but C# (or, rather, the .NET CLR) has reflectable properties. Want to know what properties an object or class has? Ask for its properties. No futzing around with asking for methods and checking to see which ones are named get* or set* and deriving a name and a type from them. If you are going to pay for a rich runtime, make sure the runtime actually does enough. Ugh. Oh, and C# has C-style enumerations, with a little bit of code around them for converting between numerical values and strings and such.

Mike: They've been dual-versioned for a while now, but the developer version number is still 1.5.0 as described in this document, where they basically say, "yeah, we keep trying to change the major version number for marketing reasons, but the people who know what they're doing won't go for that, so we're using the old numbering too."

Greg: Is any of that really a benefit to C#? I think all the stuff you describe is from .NET (and you allude to this fact). And, quite independently of the fact that C# was developed by Microsoft, I believe it still remains the case that to seriously use it you're still locked in to the Microsoft hegemony. So, no.

Yes, it is more from .NET than from C# itself (though the C# property syntax is convenient). That's actually better, though, because the .NET CLR and IL and a small section of the base API (including basic types and reflection stuff) are an ECMA standard and are headed toward being an ISO standard. Sure, Microsoft developed it, and they ship gobs of extra libraries that are not standardized, but the stuff I'm talking about is part of the standard. The Mono project already implements the stuff I'm talking about.

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