Opting into totality

[Guy Steele]

> On Aug 24, 2020, at 6:01 PM, Guy Steele <guy.steele at oracle.com> wrote:
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>> On Aug 24, 2020, at 5:04 PM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:
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>>> I am going to argue here that, just as fear of letting nulls flow stemmed from a early design that conflated multiple design issues as a result of extrapolating from too few data points (enums and strings), we have been boxed into another corner because we conflated expression-ness and the need for totality.  
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>> I'm not sure we _conflated_ the two, as we did this with our eyes open (and fairly recently), but I suspect I agree with the rest -- that for $REASONS, we introduced an asymmetry that we knew would come back to bite us, and left a note for ourselves to come back and revisit, especially as optimistic totality became more important (e.g., through sealed types.)  

P.S. I stand by my choice of the word “conflate” (“combine (two or more texts, ideas, etc.) into one”), which operation can certainly be intentional; I very carefully did not say “confuse”.  :-)  I regard “conflate” as a neutral operational word, and certainly not a pejorative.