Aggressive unboxing of values: status update

[Albert Noll]

Hi Simon,

please see comments inline.
On 11/08/2014 04:20 PM, Simon Ochsenreither wrote:
> Hi John,
> could you expand a bit on the desire to unbox Integer fields in this 
> fashion?
> This strategy really reminds of the way things ended up with int vs. 
> Integer in the first place: Smashing two, mostly incompatible sets of 
> requirements together ... I'm not sure that doing that again will 
> result in a more favorable outcome.
>
> > One way to view our experiments with boxing is that we are 
> experimenting with applying rules from the complete Common Lisp menu 
> (symbols, fixnums, weak boxes, strong boxes?) to Java values.
> This is scary. Even the current semantics in Java/the JVM are a mes in 
> this parts, adding additional layers on top of it feels like making 
> the issue even worse.
> What's wrong with just having value boxes, which make value types work 
> in situation where they can't be passed as a value, and nothing else?
There is nothing wrong with having boxes. One part of the development 
plan is to implement a boxing operation. Did you have a look at the 
"Boxing and object interoperability" section of this document?

http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~jrose/values/values-0.html

Best,
Albert
> (Sorry if my impression of these ideas is completely wrong or I 
> misunderstood something.)