[pron]

> I personally like the idea of checked exceptions, but there is no doubt they failed to deliver on Java.

Why is there no doubt? I agree that their interaction with lambdas leaves much to be desired, but those problems can be fixed.

> Explicit nullability is unarguably a good feature.

It is. It wasn't on the list, which asked for a "null safe navigation operator"; that is not a good feature, as it makes it even harder to see where the nulls are.

> But Java's Optional<T> is not that solution

I didn't say it was. Nullability types for Java are being studied.

> But even if Java does all of that, just lack of extension methods and top-level functions make using Java a nightmare for me.

Extension methods make a language a nightmare for me, though. Java doesn't try to appeal to all people, and no language ever will. It just tries to appeal to most. As for top-level functions -- stay tuned.