[iainmerrick]

But don't you see what I'm saying? I assume the order is important, and if the else: (or whatever else you decide to use) were first it would match everything and prevent the other cases from being used. So it's exactly equivalent to an if/elif/else chain. The structure is the same.

[aarongolliver]

Things can be semantically equivalent but more elegant, easier to read, and harder to make mistakes.

I think most function programmers are actually very familiar with the patters found in Java. It's often one of the reasons they fell in love with more functional styles of programming.