Null references (oh no, not again!)

[Georg Wrede]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Georg Wrede" <georg.wrede at iki.fi> wrote in message 
> news:gor5ft$1d6c$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> "Kagamin" <spam at here.lot> wrote in message
>>>> I doubt that blunt non-null forcing will solve this problem. If you're 
>>>> forced to use non-null, you'll invent a means to fool the compiler, some 
>>>> analogue of null reference - a stub object, which use will result into 
>>>> the same bug, with the difference that application won't crash 
>>>> immediately, but will behave in unpredictable way, at some point causing 
>>>> some other exception, so eventually you'll get your crash. Profit will 
>>>> be infinitesimal if any.
>>> The idea is that non-null would not be forced, but rather be the default 
>>> with an optional nullable for the times when it really is needed.
>>
>> This is interesting. I wonder what the practical result of non-null as 
>> default will be. Do programmers bother to specify nullable when needed, or 
>> will they "try to do the [perceived] Right Thing" by assigning stupid 
>> default values?
>>
>> If the latter happens, then we really are worse off than with nulls.
>>
>> Then searching for the elusive bug will be much more work.
> 
> Interesting point. We should probably keep an eye on the languages that use 
> the "Foo" vs "Foo?" syntax for non-null vs nullable to see what usage 
> patterns arise. Although, I generally have little more than contempt for 
> programmers who blindly do what they were taught (by other amateurs) is 
> usually "the right thing" without considering whether it really is 
> appropriate for the situation at hand.
> 
> Although I would think that there must be plenty of examples of things we 
> already use that could make things worse if people used them improperly. 

An interesting thought occurred to me just now. IIRC, Walter's argument 
to always zeroing memory at allocation, was to give "sensible starting 
values" and to "more easily see if data is uninitialised".

If assignment before use is compulsory, then we don't need to zero out 
memory anymore. This ought to speed data intensive tasks up.