[gavinking]

> I was merely pointing out that although it is a user definable type, the language specification does mention its existence

Sure, the language spec _mentions_ Null, in order to define the syntax sugar X? and exists x. But that doesn't mean that Null has any special place _in the type system_.

> My main programming activities are using OCaml and Haskell, both of which have very few ad-hoc language features, if any.

OK, great, sorry for making assumptions. In my defense, I just didn't quite understand why you were having such a hard time believing that Ceylon could do things like this without adhoc special cases.