Tim Bray:

Whatever[] w = new Whatever[Integer.MAX_VALUE * 2]; 

I checked, and Java will compile that happily. Binary search fall down go boom. Sigh. So, if you think you might have more than a couple billion elements in your array, you’d be better off declaring all your indexing variables as long . (Which should be free on a 64-bit computer, right?) I’ll go update the binary-search article to add this caution.

You can continue to try to work around the obvious defects of the Java type system, or you can grab a nickel and get yourself a real programming language. Like Tim, many people will continue to call the languages without these problems "academic", and desperately cling to the broken-ness.