val and final have stronger meanings when your objects are immutable. True immutability makes reasoning far easier than just referential immutability.
Aren't those members/fields not variables? If so, then those are effectively global not local, so that's a completely different story – I'm talking strictly about local variables.
> True immutability makes reasoning far easier than just referential immutability.
Yep, immutable types and constant global bindings are great.
I still don't understand why you consider having a compiler-enforced restriction on mutation worse than letting readers figure out what was the developer's intent.
In Java, the only "downside" is having to add "final" as a modifier, which is negligible.
In Scala, the alternative is to declare that variable as "var" instead of "val". When would you ever choose var over val if your object isn't supposed to mutate?
> In Scala, the alternative is to declare that variable as "var" instead of "val". When would you ever choose var over val if your object isn't supposed to mutate?
It's an extra keyword, an extra complication in the language – one more binary choice to multiply with all the other options. It would be nice to get rid of the distinction altogether.