[nailer]

> already have plenty of work and try hard to avoid 'Feature creep'

It seems a basic thing though. Like String and Number and Array literals (these are also Objects in JavaScript).

I think the answer is more likely to be age and stagnation.

[tdb7893]

Object literals would be weird in Java. My guess is that they would probably be implemented as essentially calling a no argument constructor and then a bunch of setSomeVar functions. Overall the no arg constructor and a bunch of setter functions often isn't a good pattern in Java in my experience

[Viliam1234]

There are many other "basic things", for example maps and sets, regular expressions, XML... I am sure others could add more examples... trying to support everything by special syntax would indeed be feature creep.

[nailer]

Well yeah, finding patterns in text, and unique lists are pretty common too. It's not special syntax, it's batteries included.