Fixing C's Biggest Mistake

[Walter Bright]

On 1/2/2023 3:20 AM, mate wrote:
> I don’t understand how it can be argued that both approaches are equivalent. In 
> the hardware case, the null check is done at runtime. If the programmer forgets 
> to handle some edge case, the bug gets released and affects the customers in 
> production. In the type system case, the language ensures that, when the 
> appropriate type is used, this bug cannot happen. In other words, that fixes the 
> billion dollar mistake.


May I quote myself:

"if I do a pattern match to create a non-nullable pointer, where the null arm 
does a fatal error if it can't deal with the null, it's the same thing."