The premise that one language needs to "catch up" to another by adding more features is absurd. Languages are not like automobiles, which are better the more "p

The premise that one language needs to "catch up" to another by adding more features is absurd. Languages are not like automobiles, which are better the more "perks" are added. A programming language should be as small as possible while still being able to express as many useful patterns as possible. By this metric, Java and C# are both extremely poor languages. Java is not especially complicated, but it is far more complicated than is necessary for its (extremely small) expressive powers. C# is extremely complicated already (SQL as a first-class language construct? Really?), and is becoming more complicated, while still not reaching the expressive power of e.g. Scheme.