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

[Walter Bright]

On 11/20/2017 5:03 PM, Mark wrote:
> On Monday, 20 November 2017 at 22:56:44 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 11/20/2017 3:27 AM, Timon Gehr wrote:
>>> On 20.11.2017 11:07, Atila Neves wrote:
>>>> The problem with null as seen in C++/Java/D is that it's a magical value 
>>>> that different types may have. It breaks the type system.
>>>
>>> In Java, quite literally so. The Java type system is /unsound/ because of 
>>> null. (I.e. Java is only memory safe because it runs on the JVM.)
>>
>> I'm curious. Can you expand on this, please?
>>
>> (In D, casting null to any other pointer type is marked as @unsafe.)
> 
> This blog post seems to summarize the paper he linked to:
> https://dev.to/rosstate/java-is-unsound-the-industry-perspective

Thank you.