What are the advantages and disadvantages of using immutable objects in programming?

Advantages of immutable objects:

• Thread safety: immutable objects can be safely used in multithreaded environments without synchronization.
• Ease of understanding: the object's state does not change, simplifying debugging and testing.
• Predictability: no side effects when passing the object.

Disadvantages:

• Performance: creating new objects for each change can lead to higher memory and time consumption.
• Flexibility: sometimes difficult to implement complex state changes without creating new instances.

Example in Kotlin:

// Immutable class
data class User(val name: String, val age: Int)

val user1 = User("Alice", 30)
val user2 = user1.copy(age = 31) // creates a new object with a changed age