Animal animal = new Animal();

val animal = Animal();

Swift also doesn't need the semicolons. You can also omit the () in if and switch statements. It all adds up to a lot unnecessary noise. The immutability of let is really nice too.

let animal = Animal()

In Swift I don't bother adding the type for Strings, Bools or Ints:

let foo = "Hello world"

let answer = 42

var isDone = false

if isDone {

  print("Correct: \(answer)")

  print("Wrong answer!")

}

So what?

> Author seems to be going on a rant defending Java more than anything else IMO.

Also known as "a breath of fresh air" :-)

Edit: on a more serious note I find Java to be completely worth it as long as I make simple webapps and do simple backend tasks (payment and messaging integration).

Exactly! I don't necessarily consider this a problem as much as something that "just is".