[flohofwoe]

> Java removed signedness from the type system (by making everything signed)

That's not removing signedness. Removing signedness would be treating integers as sign-less "bags of bits", and just map a signed or unsigned 'view' over those bits when actually needed (for instance when converting to a human-readable string). Essentially Schroedinger's Cat integers.

There'd need to be a handful 'signed operations' (for instance widening with sign extension vs filling with zero bits, or arithmetic vs logic right-shift), but most operations would be "sign-agnostic". It would be a more explicit way of doing integer math, closer to assembly, but it would also be a lot less confusing.