Null references redux

[bearophile]

Ary Borenszweig:

> Please, please, please, do some fun little project in Java or C# and 
> drop the idea of initializing variables whenever you declare them. Just 
> leave them like this:
[...]
> Until you do that, you won't understand what most people are answering 
> to you.

Something similar happens in other fields too. I have had long discussions with nonbiologists about evolutionary matters. Later I have understood that those discussions weren't very useful, the best thing for them, to understand why and how evolution happens, is to do a week of field etology, studying how insects on a wild lawn interact, compete, fight and cooperate with each other. If you have some expert that shows you things in just a week you can see lot of things. At that point you have some common frame of reference that allows you to understand how evolution happens :-) Practical experience is important.

Bye,
bearophile