Integer conversions too pedantic in 64-bit

[Walter Bright]

Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> It's inevitable in any systems language. What are you going to do, throw away a 
> bit for unsigned integers? That's not acceptable for a systems language. On some 
> level, you must live with the fact that you're running code on a specific machine 
> with a specific set of constraints. Trying to do otherwise will pretty much 
> always harm efficiency. True, there are common bugs that might be better 
> prevented, but part of it ultimately comes down to the programmer having some 
> clue as to what they're doing. On some level, we want to prevent common bugs, 
> but the programmer can't have their hand held all the time either.

Yup. A systems language is going to map closely onto the target machine, and 
that means its characteristics will show up in the language. Trying to pretend 
that arithmetic on integers is something other than what the CPU natively does 
just will not work.