You can do most of this stuff at compile time and not mess with the JVM. Just add auto boxing to the next version of Java and nothing need change.
As to the 16 byte char just do what most languages do when they get a basic feature down and add a Byte32 or whatever.
PS: I tend to think of Java as a slightly more friendly version of C rather than a high level language. It's fairly easy in Java to open a socket and decode a bit stream, where most high level lanugaes make that far more difficult.
Comments
You can do most of this stuff at compile time and not mess with the JVM. Just add auto boxing to the next version of Java and nothing need change.
As to the 16 byte char just do what most languages do when they get a basic feature down and add a Byte32 or whatever.
PS: I tend to think of Java as a slightly more friendly version of C rather than a high level language. It's fairly easy in Java to open a socket and decode a bit stream, where most high level lanugaes make that far more difficult.