Reading this just reminds me of all the terrible things about Java. The lack of reasonable default string representations, comparison and hashing methods, etc. are all glaring mistakes in the language design that have wasted huge amounts of time for millions of programmers. It's as though Java programmers are so deep in the grips of Stockholm Syndrome that ordinary, sensible behaviour seems amazing and "cool".
This is similar to the situation with design patterns. When design patterns came along, Java folks talked about them as though they were a wonderful new invention. But they only exist because Java is so clumsy that it needed crutches to do things that had been easy and natural in other languages for years; someone merely came along and gave the crutches names.