Finding the spirit of L-World

[John Rose]

On Feb 22, 2019, at 2:04 PM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:

> I want to have the language spec assign it a clear, precise, sound, principled meaning

+100

> most of these LIFE instances should, eventually, be replaced by plain old `x.equals(y)`.  

FWIW, in some cases where y is a constant, the comparison can also
be done with a pattern match (`x instanceof y`).  This is a generalization
of the tried and true `x == null`.  The main benefit of using pattern
match, versus a simple method call, is that it tolerates nulls.

Today's version is `Objects.equals(x, y)`, or the version of LIFE which
handles nulls:  `x == y || x != null && x.equals(y)`.