> That said, for me personally, nil punning is uncomfortably close to the kind of weak typing (like in traditional JS) that can be catastrophic in large code ba

> That said, for me personally, nil punning is uncomfortably close to the kind of weak typing (like in traditional JS) that can be catastrophic in large code bases. I think it would be totally fine and safe if “nil” is identical to an empty list in every scenario. In other words, nil is just a shorthand/synonym for an empty list. Go kind of does that, for example. The only time it’s actually handled differently in my experience is in JSON serialization (which I personally believe was a terrible decision)