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Clojure sits on the JVM. Why can't false be false and nil be NULL?

I know of no other JVM-based lisp system which makes this "tradeoff". Indeed Kawa, which is rather faster than Clojure in my experience, does not.

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Clojure's nil on the JVM and Java's null are the same value. Are we misunderstanding each other, or am I missing something?

I think we're talking past each other. Clearly in Clojure nil and false are different as NULL and false are different in Java. But in Clojure, they're both falsey, a really stupid design decision: but in Java they are NOT both falsey, only false is.

Nope, it's a great design decision.

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