Why can you assign Nothing to an Integer in VB.NET?

Question

Why am I allowed to assign Nothing to a value-type in VB.NET:

Dim x as Integer = Nothing

But I\'m not allowed to assign

Answer 1

Here's an interesting article about VB.NET and Nothing vs. Null. A small excerpt:

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...value types, can’t be compared to Nothing or Null. Value types are types such as Integers and Bytes. From the Visual Basic Language Reference:

A value type cannot hold a value of Nothing and reverts to its default value if you assign Nothing to it. If you supply a value type in Expression, IsNothing always returns False.