Does no good when interacting with the standard library, where things like collection methods return null for "not found". All that discipline and organization

Does no good when interacting with the standard library, where things like collection methods return null for "not found". All that discipline and organization you're talking about? That's a compiler's job, and if it won't do so, I'll find a language that does. I don't spend much time griping about Java these days though, because I've had many such languages in my arsenal for some time now. Ironically in most of them I use null quite freely because it's now a distinct type and no longer a landmine.