> Let me get this straight: we're behind the [other languages] and we're going to catch up to them by going slower than they are?
Gotta go faster if you ever wanna catch up. However, Java is also purposefully slow. Everything is extremely considered. And while it means it takes a while before you get a feature it tends to be pretty good.
Which features exactly? Java got exhaustive pattern matching before C# (through sealed interfaces), it has switch expressions, multi-line strings, green threads and structured concurrency, is getting value types, and even type classes in the work.
While still being behind on most features?