Comment by bluejekyll

One of the primary features I'm holding out hope for eventually making it into the language is ValueTypes: http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~jrose/values/values-0.html and the current Valhalla Project: https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/display/valhalla/Main

The simplest example of why this would be valuable (edit: this was not an intentional pun), the Optional type could become stack based, such that you could ensure that the variable referring to the Optional type is never null. This would help reduce a common class of bugs in Java code stemming from NPE's.