On Wednesday, 28 February 2018 at 14:05:19 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
I expect that pretty much anything you propose that requires
code flow analysis is DOA.
Walter was arguing against precisely because code-flow analysis
is so hard to get right,
Thanks, that's an important judgement. I've read the 3 threads
that I found around this issue, but didn't notice this sentiment
before that code-flow analysis is so problematic.
Yeah, non-null class fields hinge on code-flow analysis. And I'll
accept that pushing non-null refs won't lead to anything if the
necessary code-flow analysis is too tricky for the benefit.
I've never understood why some folks have so many problems with
null pointers.
My gripe is that the necessarily-nullable class reference doesn't
express the intent.
Either a codebase must rely on silent conventions or every
function with asserts.
and that blows up quite quickly such that it's fixed quite
quickly.
Yeah, I admit that most null crashes surface adequately quickly
even when you have to run the program first.
It's merely sad to see D, with all its powerful static
inspection, rely on runtime tests for nulls while other languages
(Kotlin, Zig, and 2017 C#) rule null out at compile-time, as if
it's the most natural thing in the world.
-- Simon
