[BoorishBears]

Kotlin solves this very nicely with Uxxx types, like UByte, UInt, UShort, etc.

Typing allows enforcing the boundaries where you go from signed to unsigned, and the bit fiddling is handled in the class

   UShort.toInt(): Int = data.toInt() and 0xFFFF

They're defined as inline classes/functions that have no runtime cost so it's equivalent to the "Straightforward emulation" from the article

[Xorlev]

Another good reason to switch to Kotlin. :)