Why no tail() or head() method in List to get last or first element?

Question

I recently had a discussion with a collegue why the List interface in Java doesn\'t have a head() and tail() method.

In order to implement

Answer 1

If you want to process a list recursively, which is often what head/tail are used for in functional programming, you can use an Iterator.

Integer min(Iterator iterator) {
    if ( !iterator.hasNext() ) return null;
    Integer head = iterator.next();
    Integer minTail = min(iterator);
    return minTail == null ? head : Math.min(head, minTail);
}