A peek at the roadmap for pattern matching and more

[Brian Goetz]

First, recall that I asked already that we table this digression; I 
provided the peek because several folks asked me for some more context, 
not to distract us with a shiny bikeshed.

Second, I get what you are saying -- I really do, because I've been 
exactly there on my long and winding journey -- and even thought briefly 
I had reached the end there.  And I totally get the idea that it seems 
like we're adding more concepts than we need to.  But I'm looking at 
this from the point of view of _what mental model do we  want to 
encourage_, not how can we make the fewest changes to the language.   I 
realize the "just use a fake tuple" (or anonymous record) appeals to a 
sense of economy, but I do not believe it equilibrates in the right 
place.  We have invested a significant amount in integrating pattern 
matching into the language; I don't want to nail something on the side.

> I'm a little disappointed by the current discussions, when Brian announced that a record will be immutable, I was flabbergasted how brilliant the idea was because not only you can use a record and do directly pattern destructuring on it but also you can use it as an anonymous carrier of values to transfer the values from a plain old class to a representation you can do destructuring on it.

And we're doing all those things.  Just at the translation level, not 
the source level.

> It seems that that plan has been lost at some point.

No, it was not lost, it got extensive scrutiny, I spent a significant 
amount of time considering it and working out the details before I 
soured on the idea.  Not all initially attractive ideas turn out to be 
right.

But, back to my top point: this is not the issue that is in front of us 
now.