That logic is just a starting point (just to avoid the "I don't need it, why can't you be just like me?"), not the whole thing. Then you have to take into acco

That logic is just a starting point (just to avoid the "I don't need it, why can't you be just like me?"), not the whole thing. Then you have to take into account a few other criteria, such as [1] internal coherence in the language, [2] difficulty in implementation (and explaining to others) [3] what your target audience is, and what they want, [4] what competitors are doing. I think full operator overloading would hurt [2], but special-casing Bignums would not hurt [1], [2] at all (as I said, JSP EL already have +,-,*,/, etc. , String already have +, +=). [3] This is what this thread is all about, no need to repeat :-D And [4]... Well in this case Java is really playing catch up.