On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 5:29 PM, Jeremie Pelletier <jerem...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I actually side with Walter here. I much prefer my programs to crash on > using a null reference and fix the issue than add runtime overhead that does > the same thing. In most cases a simple backtrace is enough to pinpoint the > location of the bug. There is NO RUNTIME OVERHEAD in implementing nonnull reference types. None. It's handled entirely by the type system. Can we please move past this? > Null references are useful to implement optional arguments without any > overhead by an Optional!T wrapper. If you disallow null references what > would "Object foo;" initialize to then? It wouldn't. The compiler wouldn't allow it. It would force you to initialize it. That is the entire point of nonnull references.
