You know... C# may be less painful than Java, but, still, it took me 8 years to go through learning C++ after I had learned OOP with Smalltalk and done some programming with Actor (kind of Smalltalk with an ALGOL-ish flavor). I closed my first book on C++ seconds after I saw the overloaded binary shift operator being used to output text.

I see my early contact with Smalltalk made me picky and spoiled. Today, it makes not much difference if it's C#, Java or C++, they are all painful well beyond my pain tolerance.

It's like smashing one's toes with hammers of different sizes - I am pretty sure even a small hammer is painful enough.