> Java continues to try and catch up to Kotlin
Does it, really? Java has had pattern matching since 21 (2023). Kotlin still, to this day, the year of our Lord 2026, doesn't...
Kotlin has always had smart-casting in if and when (sort of switch) expressions, which are strictly more powerful than the current version of Java "pattern matching". Both don't do de-structuring which I would consider a basic requirement for pattern matching, but at least Kotlin didn't call it pattern matching.
Kotlin had it since 1.0, it's just called `when` instead of `match`.
https://kotlinlang.org/docs/control-flow.html#expressions