Introducing Nullable Reference Types in C#. Is there hope for D, too?

[codephantom]

On Friday, 17 November 2017 at 12:18:47 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:
> That's the whole point of using a safe language, otherwise we'd 
> be fine with C.
>

Personally, I would prefer to teach new students to program in C 
first - precisely because it's an unsafe language - or at least, 
can be used unsafely.

(that's how i first learnt to program - and actually I taught 
myself).

Because of C, I 'had to' learn how to write code in a defensive 
manner.

These days people often start with a safe language instead, and 
often use it within an overly sophisticated IDE ( a bit like 
having your mother hold your hand everytime you cross the road). 
I think that encourages laziness, in terms of defensive 
programming/thinking. Programmers become complacent and leave too 
much stuff up to compile time checks.

I think people can write more correct code in the beginning, by 
simply changing the way they think about the code and how it 
might interact in the wider ecosystem...and, maybe even by not 
relying on sophisticated IDE's (at least at the early stages).

Of course compile time checks are needed. But they should not be 
at the expense of writing code correctly in the first place. They 
should come in at the latter stage of defensive programming, not 
the first stage.

If you check the validity of an object before going on to 
reference/modify it, then no compile time check is ever needed.

nice Dr Dobbs article about it here:

http://www.drdobbs.com/defensive-programming/184401915