I think the problem is more that null exists but we like to simplify and pretend it doesn't most of the time. Null is just an extra state that can be useful, bu

I think the problem is more that null exists but we like to simplify and pretend it doesn't most of the time. Null is just an extra state that can be useful, but sometimes it is so uncommon that we pretend that state is not there. Back when C programming was more prevalent I don't think null was that big an issue because most programmers were aware of it and would check for it. On second thought, the other big issue with null is that in many languages it just crashes the program which is a rather severe consequence you don't see for most mistakes.