I've been learning programming for some months now, mainly with java and C#. They seem so similar from my limited knowledge, so I'm trying to grasp an understanding of the practical differences. Could seasoned programmers please enlighten me as to which programming language is more suited for which kinds of jobs?
In what situation would you say "To create this kind of software, java is more suitable than C#" or "To create this kind of sofware, C# is more suitable than java"?
Java was originally designed to be the portable solution. If you need something to run on multiple operating systems you would probably want to go with Java.
From my experience in the financial world, the trend I see most commonly is Java being used on the backend (typically Linux servers) and C# (WPF) being used on the front end. I think this trend is here to stay until either Mono becomes widely accepted or Microsoft figures out a way to make their Server OS's free :)
I'm not saying Java is more suited for back end than C# (although I do think WPF has the edge over anything Java has for front end development) all I'm saying is that this is a very common trend in many financial/trading systems.