more band aid coming - Object methods on 'any' tvars

[Brian Goetz]

If you mean "null" as the existing syntax...  that would be semantically 
confusing.  It would creates the idea in the user's head that null and 0 
are the same thing.  Then they'll expect "x == null" to mean "x == 0" 
for ints.  They'll expect to be able to assign null directly to an int, 
and have it coerced to zero.  And now it's not just syntax, its 
conceptual, and they have to build a new concept of null.  Overloading 
this syntax essentially pushes us into a different mental model, and 
hence a different feature.  We definitely DO NOT want to just say "null 
for int means 0".

So while this sounds like a syntax issue, it's not really.

On 1/16/2015 11:54 AM, Simon Ochsenreither wrote:
>> I've just pushed a compiler/specializer patch that adds support for
>> T.default.
>
> I really don't want to start a syntax discussion, but what's the reason
> to introduce a special syntax where existing syntax would have been
> sufficient?
>