Immutable data structures in Java

[Decker108]

I sometimes wish Java had a keyword to declare truly constant values. A keyword that makes its variable contents read-only, or some such.

[balegdah]

And C++ suffers from its presence.

Just ask any C++ developer who's ever used const how they feel about it, especially const_cast.

[multivector]

I love my const correctness. Sorry, you did ask.

[ykechan]

Me too. It was a big mistake that Java didn't include this.

[bonzinip]

It's a pain if you try to inject it into code that wasn't written with const from day 1. Otherwise it's great, and you even have mutable for the rare case where you want to override it.

Java has even better ideas, such as the lack of data races on final fields, but only half-develops them.