The main design goals behind this project are

• to create a Java-compatible language
• that compiles at least as fast as Java,
• make it safer than Java, i.e. statically check for common pitfalls such as null pointer dereference,
• make it more concise than Java by supporting variable type inference, * higher-order functions (closures), extension functions, mixins and first-class delegation, etc;
• and, keeping the useful level of expressiveness (see above), make it way simpler than the most mature competitor – Scala.