In the c# I dislike the extra mental load of having to work out which rules apply to the lexical thing I see being manipulated in the code. If I see references being assigned in Java I can tell that that's the case just by looking at the code. In c# I have to see the definition of the objects to tell what semantics are being expressed by the syntax. Likewise, with properties in c# a straightforward field assignment can be pretty much anything which means again, innocent looking code can be misleading and the only way to know is to read the definitions. Java is simpler to read and I value that.