Kotlin is absolutely massive, and they often add n small features instead of a single more complicated one, so I don't think the comparision to Scala fits.

Funnily enough kotlin added some rushed, delivered syntax sugar in the form of `when` and java just came and added proper pattern matching with algebraic data types and exhaustiveness checking into the platform itself, making it better than the guest language at its own game. Meanwhile I never felt this "landing page growing" mindset with Scala.

This is subjective of course but for me Kotlin is certainly not minimal - I'd put it closer to C# than Java in terms of features. Typescript and Java feel like far smaller languages. Of course, C++ is in a class of its own in terms of anti-minimalism.

I find Kotlin to be full footguns in general, letting you do stuff because 'why the hell not'. It feels like the Kotlin designers just wanted to show off, without considering that many of the resulting code patterns would be terrible.