Why is compareTo on an Enum final in Java?

Question

An enum in Java implements the Comparable interface. It would have been nice to override Comparable\'s compareTo method, but here it\

Answer 1

One possible explanation is that compareTo should be consistent with equals.

And equals for enums should be consistent with identity equality (==).

If compareTo where to be non-final it would be possible to override it with a behaviour which was not consistent with equals, which would be very counter-intuitive.