Yes - but as we keep repeating - if you do that why would you use null as a possible state to begin with? Not specific to Java, but in general. E.g a boolean i

Yes - but as we keep repeating - if you do that why would you use null as a possible state to begin with? Not specific to Java, but in general. E.g a boolean in java has two states true/false while a Boolean with capital B has 3 states true/false/null. In that context you can choose type to represent how many states you have. E.g if it’s a field representing a cache of a bool value you can represent “not yet calculated” with null. It you were to magically convert null to false for a Boolean it only has two states! It’s now unusable for the purpose.