Jon Pretty

Not to Dotty, it doesn't... but Martin did change the proposal in response to feedback on his PR, so it's not like it was a closed process.

I don't think any changes can fix it. It's not only what it does, but that the whole thing is a confused, sprawling, over-complicated mess.

But it brings much more accessible syntax to something many programmers would not bother to write because it would be too verbose.

Which of the multiple syntax variations? "enum class" isn't shorter and "enum" hardly supports any Scala language "feature", e.g. methods.

enum List[+T] { case Nil; case ::(head: T, tail: List[T]) } vs sealed trait List[+T] case object Nil extends List[T] case class ::[T](hea...

Now implement one of List's methods. I'll wait.

implicit class ListMethods[+T](list: List[T]) { ... } But I think that's the point: an "enum" is closer to a pure ADT.

I think now we are deep into post-hoc rationalization. Yes, this enum impl is very poorly designed, but no, it doesn't have to be this way.