Maybe you're right, but I think it's not so much a matter of what's right or wrong, but what's appropriate for languages with different audience size. Our exper

Maybe you're right, but I think it's not so much a matter of what's right or wrong, but what's appropriate for languages with different audience size. Our experience is at evolving a language for a certain audience size, and perhaps if Java's popularity declines to the more modest market shares of the languages you mentioned, their choices may become appropriate for Java, too. As to your other points, like I explained to someone else here, even three decades of experience evolving a language that's achieved a measure of success is still no guarantee that every feature will work well, which is why most big new features, string templates included, are first released as preview (i.e. a feature that may change). That allows us to test our hypotheses against the problems people actually encounter rather than those we or others may speculate they'd encounter, and adjust the feature accordingly before it is finalised. To the best of my knowledge, all preview features have undergone some adjustment before becoming permanent, but usually the changes required were relatively small. Also, we try to think more long-term, because in ten years no one is going to care or even remember if a feature arrived five or seven years prior.