RFR: JDK-8281169: Expand discussion of elements and types

[Maurizio Cimadamore]

On Wed, 2 Aug 2023 01:52:25 GMT, Joe Darcy <darcy at openjdk.org> wrote:

> Also core reflection is in the java._lang_ and java._lang_.reflect packages but generally present a VM-centric view of the world and starting with generics the VM type system and the language type system were much more different than before that change.

Precisely - core reflection is about modelling runtime types, which feature a much simpler type systems (at least w/o type specialization). While core reflection does try to model language concepts, annotations and generics are generally immaterial to JVM decisions. That's why it felt odd to compare the j.l.m API to core reflection, as the two API exists with two very different purposes, and so they settled for different points in the design space.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/15097#issuecomment-1661863148