Jonathan M Davis:
and I think that null can be extremely useful.
""null"" values are extremely useful, no one disagrees on this.
Good functional languages use even more ""null"" values compared
to most (or all) D programs!
------------------------
Walter:
It was Hoare's engaging presentation on it that turned it into
a cause celebre.
Null pointers aren't even remotely the source of most
programming bugs. If they were, then languages that disallow
them would be super-productive in comparison. But they aren't.
They're just an incremental step, and elevating it into a "deal
breaker" is frankly ridiculous.
Even if it's not a big problem, in the end this problem is now
"solved", because all new languages (Scala, Rust, all the
Java-like languages appearing on the JavaVM), plus most or all
functional languages, don't have pointers nullable on default.
Bye,
bearophile
