Spec#, nullables and more

[Walter Bright]

bearophile wrote:
> Walter, instead of poking and teasing me as a ten year old does, why we don't
> start talking about serious things? Like, for example if we want nonnull
> references/pointers in D3. If you aren't interested in this feature we can
> stop wasting my time. It's not a necessary feature, I will keep using D2 even
> without it. But it may be something nice to have.


I've explained my position and rationale on null many, many times here.

tl;dr: null serves the same role as the NaN does for floating point types. It 
means an invalid value (not an uninitialized value). Invalid values are highly 
useful as bug detectors (usually mistaken for being a bug). I wish there were a 
NaN value we could use for integers. Without a null, one is reduced to having to 
craft a default value that throws exceptions when accessed, ending up in the 
same place.

To eliminate null pointers is the same as shooting the canary in your coal mine 
because its twitter annoys you.