Design Document on Nullability and Value Types

Posted on June 2, 2023

As we've hinted at, we've made some progress refining the essential differences between primitive and reference types, which has enabled us to shed the `.val` / `.ref` distinction and lean more heavily on nullability. The following document outlines the observations that have enabled this current turn of direction and some of its consequences. This document is mostly to be interpreted in the context of the Valhalla journey, and so talks about where we were a few months ago and where we're heading now …'

More at https://mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/valhalla-spec-observers/2023-May/002243.html