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Here's my take: yes, it was a billion dollar mistake. But it wasn't null on its own that was the mistake, it was making it impossible to opt out of. It's incalc
by moomin 4y ago
Here's my take: yes, it was a billion dollar mistake. But it wasn't null on its own that was the mistake, it was making it impossible to opt out of. It's incalculable how much that breaks pretty much all of the mental modelling you do about systems. Null safety is the only way to get back to where we want to be.
- KMag 4y agoI believe that's why Hoare said that the null reference, not null, was his billion dollar mistake. It was a simple one-liner in his type checker "if getting a type error in a cast, if the source type is nulltype and the target type is any kind of reference, always let the cast happen". His (biased by hindsight) recollection is that he even felt it was a bit dirty at the time, but made a lot of code shorter.
- darthrupert 4y agoI always thought of it as a humblebrag. Like, I made this billion dollar mistake while giving birth to a trillion dollar industry.
- moomin 4y agoYou’re not wrong.