> A small minority, but apparently it includes all the floats you’re likely to use.

Sorry, I meant a small minority need to be boxed - all the floats you're likely to use can remain unboxed.

Got take, but a double with only 8 bits of exponent actually seems kind of nice, you get the extra precision but it can be cast down to a single and you only lose precision; you don’t have values that are outside the range of singles.