Returning to this thread and going up a level or two: The real impact of this discussion, imho, should not be "now let's rush a declarative nullness feature out asap", or even "let's solve bucket 3 now in a way nullness will have to be harmonious with later". What I humbly suggest it points to is, maybe: "let's shift focus right now to delivering just bucket 2 asap, so that we keep our options open longer for the rest". Is that fair? It seems like a very good plan to me. Bucket 2 is pretty non-invasive to the language model and still improves matters for Integer.
Thoughts? On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 3:14 PM Kevin Bourrillion <kev...@google.com> wrote: > I don't see the conflict. I'm saying, yeah, there *will* be exclamation > fatigue until a feature comes along eventually to relieve it. (In the worst > case, that's `public null-marked class...`; in the best case it's just > `language-level 22;` or what have you.) But I still think it's the right > thing to do anyway. > > > On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 10:18 AM Brian Goetz <brian.go...@oracle.com> > wrote: > >> >> >> >> * Exclamation fatigue would be very real, so assume there is some way >> to make `!` the default for some scope >> > +1 >> > >> > Yes, I think it's a dead end to expect users to sprinkle '!' everywhere >> they don't want nulls—this is usually the informal default in common >> programming practice, so we need some way to enable flipping the default. >> >> On the other hand, this is on a collision course with Kevin's >> "ref-default" recommendation, which had many strong supporting reasons, >> whether this is spelled `!` or `.val`. The "but it will be tiring for >> people to type" doesn't feel like a very good reason to flip the default >> from something that has such strong objective justifications. >> >> (Dan was never sold on ref-default, but Kevin was, so I'll leave it to >> him to reconcile "ref-default is the right default" with "but, >> exclamation fatigue.") >> > > > -- > Kevin Bourrillion | Java Librarian | Google, Inc. | kev...@google.com > -- Kevin Bourrillion | Java Librarian | Google, Inc. | kev...@google.com
