Null references (oh no, not again!)

[Alex Burton]

Walter Bright Wrote:

> Daniel Keep wrote:
> >> * Accessing arrays out-of-bounds
> >> * Dereferencing null pointers
> >> * Integer overflow
> >> * Accessing uninitialized variables
> >>
> >> 50% of the bugs in Unreal can be traced to these problems!
> > 
> > Tim Sweeny isn't an amateur; he's responsible, at least in part, for one
> > of the most commercially successful game engines ever.  I figure if even
> > he has trouble with these things, it's worth trying to fix them.
> > 
> > Note that D already solves #1 and #4, LDC could give us #3... that just
> > leaves #2.  :D
> 
> 1 and 4 are pernicious, memory corrupting, hard to find problems. 2 is 
> easy to find, does not corrupt memory. It isn't even in the same 
> continent as 1 and 4 are.
> 
That is a very programmer centric statement, you are rating the value of the problems in the cost to your own time once the bug has been received.
The full cost to an enterprise of a catastrophic bug (which all 4 of these are ) in a released piece of software are almost certainly many orders of magnitude larger than the cost of programmer time to find and fix it.

Alex