I definitely see your point about "too much" enforcement, specifically with the case of error handling. In Java, I could just bubble everything up, default exit

I definitely see your point about "too much" enforcement, specifically with the case of error handling. In Java, I could just bubble everything up, default exit-early, and worry about proper handling later. I'm sure a similar argument could be stated for having to create simple data classes vs tuples or dynamic objects, or even number types. So I do agree there is a middle ground here. For example, Java will be friendly towards number casting whereas Haskell is very exacting.