> The user neelk states that one of the bad things about the language is "Null. In 2011." Can someone clarify for me why having null in a language is bad (other

> The user neelk states that one of the bad things about the language is "Null. In 2011." Can someone clarify for me why having null in a language is bad (other than how dereferencing/calling-a-method on null in most languages results in your program crashing)? That right there is the reason. Those crashes are a huge burden on the software industry, it's even been called the "billion dollar mistake", http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3186 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3186 And of course it is possible to have references which cannot be null, for example, even C++ has this: References as opposed to pointers. Many new languages have adopted the non-null approach, off the top of my head, Rust.