Odin's type system is just different to many other languages, and trying to compare it to others doesn't always work out very well. `Maybe` does exist in Odin.

Odin's type system is just different to many other languages, and trying to compare it to others doesn't always work out very well. `Maybe` does exist in Odin. So if you want a `nil` string either use `Maybe(string)` or `cstring` (which has both `nil` (since it is a pointer) and `""` which is the empty string, a non-nil pointer). Also, Odin doesn't have "interface"s since it's a strictly imperative procedural language. As for you question about base values, I am not sure what you mean by this. Odin hasn't got a "everything is a pointer internally" approach like many GC'd languages. Odin follows in the C tradition, so the "base value" is just whatever the type is.