I thought this was an interesting outlook on Java and C# - like I care about Ruby. Anyway, I'm surprised there wasn't more on C# at OSCON2005. I've heard that C# has a pretty good following of Linux users. Granted, this was just something I heard from a hardcore Linux person, so I have no idea how much support it has. Of course, this is all because of Mono.
Greg talks about how Java 5.0 (1.5) and 6.0 (1.6) features will help Java surpass C# current capabilities. Well, he's right. That kind of brings one thing I've always worried about to mind: will .NET be able to keep up? Microsoft is always good in the heat of battle, so I'm sure they'll do a good job; but speculation is exactly that. .NET 2.0 is coming soon, but when will 2.1 be around? If .NET releases are continually tied to other product releases, we may be hurting for features as Java spits out releases with smaller feature changes quicker. The 2.0 release will no doubt give us a great advantage over 1.1, but wouldn't it have been better to have gradual improvements to get us here? Maybe it's just me.
I obviously think some things should've waited until the 2.0 release, but I'm sure there could've been a number of features added to 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 releases. Either way, 2 1/2 years later, we finally get an upgrade - more significant than any Java release since it's move to Java 2. Let's just hope they keep coming...and a little sooner.