Null references redux

[Ary Borenszweig]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Denis Koroskin wrote:
>  > On Sat, 26 Sep 2009 22:30:58 +0400, Walter Bright
>  > <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
>  >> D has borrowed ideas from many different languages. The trick is to
>  >> take the good stuff and avoid their mistakes <g>.
>  >
>  > How about this one:
>  > 
> http://sadekdrobi.com/2008/12/22/null-references-the-billion-dollar-mistake/ 
> 
>  >
>  >
>  > :)
> 
> I think he's wrong.

Please, please, please, do some fun little project in Java or C# and 
drop the idea of initializing variables whenever you declare them. Just 
leave them like this:

int i;

and then later initialize them when you need them, for example different 
values depending on some conditions. Then you'll realize how powerful is 
having the compiler stop variables that are not initialized *in the 
context of a function, not necessarily in the same line of their 
declaration*. It's always a win: you get a compile time error, you don't 
have to wait to get an error at runtime.

Until you do that, you won't understand what most people are answering 
to you.

But I know what you'll answer. You'll say "what about pointers?", "what 
about ref parameters?", "what about out parameters?", and then someone 
will say to you "C# has them", etc, etc.

No point disussing non-null variables without also having the compiler 
stop uninitialized variables.