Is &quot;it&quot; some kind of magic value? So much for Kotlin being simpler &#x2F; more readable than Scala. At least _ <i>looks</i> like syntax.<p>That comparison looks misleading - the .stream() and .collect() are conversions, not necessary on every call by any means.<p>Kotlin&#x27;s approach to null safety is ad-hoc and integrated into the language in a way that makes it hard to abstract over. I think it will lead to inconsistent code as the JVM ecosystem moves on to make more use of Option-like alternatives.<p>Monkey patching is pure evil in any large codebase.<p>I think Java will likely add more and more type inference in future releases.<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, syntax and sugar are important. But a language that <i>only</i> offers those is probably not worth the overhead, and such things are relatively easy for the &quot;parent&quot; language to adopt.