Null references redux

[Walter Bright]

language_fan wrote:
> The idea behind non-nullable types and other contracts is to catch these 
> errors on compile time. Sure, the code is a bit harder to write, but it 
> is safe and never segfaults. The idea is to minimize the amount of 
> runtime errors of all sorts. That's also how other features of statically 
> typed languages work.


I certainly agree that catching errors at compile time is preferable by 
far. Where I disagree is the notion that non-nullable types achieve 
this. I've argued extensively here that they hide errors, not fix them.

Also, by "safe" I presume you mean "memory safe" which means free of 
memory corruption. Null pointer exceptions are memory safe. A null 
pointer could be caused by memory corruption, but it cannot *cause* 
memory corruption.