You forgot runtime agents! IMO compile-time annotation processors such as Lombok and MapStruct are far from the most magic part of Java. They're straightforwar

You forgot runtime agents! IMO compile-time annotation processors such as Lombok and MapStruct are far from the most magic part of Java. They're straightforward code generators. Their impacts is localized to where they get applied and you can actually see the code that's generated. They're very good for diminishing boilerplate. They're no worse than Rust's very standard #[derive(xyz)] proc macros. Having the code being generated on the fly (instead of a one-shot) means it follows the rest of the structure it's derived from i.e. equals() and hashCode() don't risk to be forgotten when adding a field to a class (hello maddening Map<> lookup errors) Also, yes, Lombok is _funky_ in how it works but there are "pure" alternatives like AutoBuilder and AutoValue if one cares.