> On Aug 24, 2020, at 6:01 PM, Guy Steele <guy.ste...@oracle.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>> On Aug 24, 2020, at 5:04 PM, Brian Goetz <brian.go...@oracle.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> I am going to argue here that, just as fear of letting nulls flow stemmed
>>> from a early design that conflated multiple design issues as a result of
>>> extrapolating from too few data points (enums and strings), we have been
>>> boxed into another corner because we conflated expression-ness and the need
>>> for totality.
>>
>> I'm not sure we _conflated_ the two, as we did this with our eyes open (and
>> fairly recently), but I suspect I agree with the rest -- that for $REASONS,
>> we introduced an asymmetry that we knew would come back to bite us, and left
>> a note for ourselves to come back and revisit, especially as optimistic
>> totality became more important (e.g., through sealed types.)
P.S. I stand by my choice of the word “conflate” (“combine (two or more texts,
ideas, etc.) into one”), which operation can certainly be intentional; I very
carefully did not say “confuse”. :-) I regard “conflate” as a neutral
operational word, and certainly not a pejorative.
