Aggressive unboxing of values: status update

[Simon Ochsenreither]

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?
 
(Sorry if my impression of these ideas is completely wrong or I misunderstood
something.)