(non)nullable types

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Sebastian Biallas" <groups.5.sepp at spamgourmet.com> wrote in message 
news:gmpsun$14dj$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Christopher Wright wrote:
>> Oh, and I vote no. I think it's needless complexity. I code without any 
>> special care for null objects, and I get a segfault or 
>> NullReferenceException maybe once a week, probably less. I've always been 
>> able to track down the bug very quickly.
>
> That misses the point completely. It's not about you (as the programmer) 
> getting NPEs; it's about the user getting bug-free software in the first 
> place.
>
> In most cases a segfault/NPE is easy to track down for the programmer, I 
> guess nobody would object to this. But once the software is shipped, it's 
> a very serious problem: It's a situation the programmer didn't thought 
> about so you usually have a data loss.
>
> I really like the approach of the Nice[1] language: Before you can access 
> a nullable type you have to test whether it's null. After the test, the 
> type is automagically converted to a nonnullable type. This language 
> doesn't have a NPE, so you *know* that your software is bug-free in this 
> regard.
>
> [1] http://nice.sf.net
>
> Sebastian

Interesting, that is very nice, I like that idea a lot.