In a perfect world probably. But have you considered that there's a reason why primitive types are left as primitives even in C# (which had the opportunity to correct the mistakes Java made).

I'm not suggesting that primitive types be implemented using the mechanics of regular objects. I'm just saying that they could be made to appear to the programmer like regular objects. Combined with certain restrictions (e.g. no extending from primitives) and some compiler tricks, this can be made to work efficiently. The fact that Java's primitive types are all immutable makes this even easier -- immutable objects are very well-behaved.

And sure, your performance might suffer if you're not careful, but I don't think that's necessarily worse than having to force people to deal with the primitive/object difference even when they don't particularly care. It's kind of like the autoboxing situation today. If you're not careful you could end up with a bunch of unwanted boxing/unboxing operations. So when I need to be careful, I am. But when I just want to get something done, it's way easier to just let the autoboxing happen.

My favorite part about the post is that he points to C# as an example of a "good" language, as if C# and Java were not essentially the same language.

C# started out essentially the same as Java. But at this point it's way better.

• Function types and closures. This alone makes it way better.
• More efficient generics (no boxing/unboxing).
• Local variable type inference.
• Coming in C# 5.0: automatic CPS transformation (async/await).

Any experienced c++ programmer will tell you that "classes if necessary, but not necessarily classes" is the way to go. Class explosion is not pretty, and makes for over-complex stupid implementations.

When trying to design a new, clean, high-level programming language, I probably wouldn't pay much attention to C++ rules of thumb.

Making everything behave like an object can make things much cleaner. It all depends on how exactly this is done, but a lot of complexity in Java comes from the fact that primitive types behave differently. C# did a bit better, but there's still the value-vs-class distinction which can trip you up in subtle ways.

Reminds me how the way drives recognized 1.44MB floppies (3.5") from 720KB ones was by checking if there was a hole in the bottom-right corner (the bottom-left corner being for write protection). And sure enough, if you made a hole in a 720KB floppy it would be possible to format it as 1.44. There might have been a few more errors, but I remember when HD floppies were 3-4 times more expensive, so it was definitely worth it. At least for a teenager with only pocket money. Ah, those floppy drilling afternoons... Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

French trader Kerviel was sentenced to $6.7 billion. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/business/global/06bank.html

In general I would agree, if the conclusion is debatable (even if ever so slightly). But if you find more dogs than cats in your neighbourhood, you could as well declare there are less cats than dogs, because it is formally equivalent. The case we are talking about now is actually the same degree of equivalence (I just did the math, it's worth to do it once to convince yourself).

I get your point. But since the two sentences are statistically equivalent, it is completely irrelevant which method you used, they lead to the same conclusion. So you could very well examine the population of people who spend a lot of time on the internet, find that they are more depressed than average, and conclude that "people showing signs of depression are more likely to spend a lot of time surfing the internet".

OK, let's be technical. Let:

D be the number of depressed people; A be the number of internet addicted people; DA be the number of depressed and internet addicted people. T be the total number of people.

Then: "internet addicts are more likely than the general population to be depressed" means "the proportion of DA among A is greater than the proportion of D among T", or "DA/A > D/T", which is mathematically equivalent (since all number are positive) to "DA*T > D*A".

"depressed people could be less likely than the general population to be internet addicts" means "the proportion of DA among D is greater than the proportion of A among T", or "DA/D < A/T", which is equivalent "DA*T < D*A".

No.

True, we would be ... all content! I'm so glad to be dissatisfied with life instead! ;)

Well, "spending a lot of time on the internet and showing signs of depression are correlated" would be good, but clearly not understood straight away by many people. One could argue it is better than to be wrongly understood by those people (and then even people understanding correlation can be influenced by the "wrong" formulations, when not paying full attention), and it could provide the opportunity to explain the concept. Yes, it's a pain, but then the fact that not knowing it makes you much more vulnerable to manipulation might justify it. Definitely this is something that should be given more attention in schools, until "correlation" becomes as much understood as "likely".

The word "cause" would assert causation. When the summary says:

it suggests causation, because that does not sound the same as:

One might agree that those sentences are formally equivalent (in an idealized version of english), but the way most people speak, those sentences suggest different causations.