What's the point of Kotlin, aside absence of semicolons and the 'val' keyword, if it plays the catch up game with the rest of the features becoming available first in Java?
> They can't have it instantly.
Why not if Scala did it way before pattern matching was introduced into Java?
Read-only interface by default - `MutableList` vs `List`.
if-expression, they just look nicer than `a ? b : c`.
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You're right that Kotlin is not an "abstraction atop Java (the language)". It's meant to be a better Java that feels familar to Java. With that rationale in mind, it's reasonable that they left some features from FP languages out of Kotlin.
As I have said in another reply, it was a great decision to not follow what Scala did with pattern matching.
> They can't have it instantly.
Why not if Scala did it way before pattern matching was introduced into Java?