nil doesn't have to be a failure mode, if we are programming with data it can just mean "empty". The trouble, I think you would point out, is that (.send bus pa

nil doesn't have to be a failure mode, if we are programming with data it can just mean "empty". The trouble, I think you would point out, is that (.send bus payload) doesn't have a sensible definition of empty – because the bus reference is imperative/stateful/object oriented, not data oriented. Nil punning can't help with foreign interop to imperative systems, but that doesn't mean nil is the root cause of the pain. The imperative dependency is.