[fooyc]

The author cites this to justify the need for Records:

> Most Java objects set every field to be private and make all fields accessible only through accessor methods for reading and writing.

> Unfortunately, there are no language enforced conventions for defining accessors; you could give the getter for foo the name getBar, and it’ll still work fine, except for the fact that it would confuse anybody trying to access bar and not `foo'.

Scala supports pattern matching on objects implementing the `unapply` method.

Is this considered harmful? Why didn’t Java follow this route?

[wscp-dev]

it's a matter of standardisation again. Java's standard is like C++; ponderous. The record pattern jep indicates in final footnotes that something like unapply may be in the works, so all hope is not lost.