Opportunities for D

[w0rp via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 9 July 2014 at 17:01:02 UTC, bearophile wrote:
> Dicebot:
>
>> I don't know where it comes from but non-nullable reference 
>> type has ZERO value if it is not the default one.
>
> This article talks about switching to NotNull on default in 
> real (small) Java projects (you have to add a @NonNullByDefault 
> at package level to change the default):
>
> http://blog2.vorburger.ch/2014/07/java-8-null-type-annotations-in-eclipse.html
>
> Bye,
> bearophile

I've used the Eclipse annotations with some success when writing 
Java code, which I do primarily for Android these days. If we 
were to ever transition to non nullable references by default, 
annotations would be a good way to make that transition. @notnull 
can be used to disallow setting null on references, so it can 
check for things like initialising a non-nullable reference in a 
constructor. @nullable would available for doing what is already 
true for references. Then Option(T) could be available as a 
library solution, which can hold a @nullable inside it and 
perform the necessary runtime checking and casting to @notnull T. 
Then you put things through a long deprecation cycle and the 
billion dollar mistake is finally corrected.

There's a pipedream, anyway.