> that they failed is a fact and that makes all their properties, including lack of null pointers, of questionable utility in the craft of actually writing usef

> that they failed is a fact and that makes all their properties, including lack of null pointers, of questionable utility in the craft of actually writing useful software. This seems like something akin to the just world fallacy. So far, no language with feature X has achieved mainstream success; therefore, feature X is of questionable utility. I don't think this makes much sense. Programming languages are combinations of a large number of features and design decisions, any of which (or none of which!) could be responsible for their unpopularity. Some features have value that is immediately obvious once you've experienced them, irrespective of the viability of the overall language they may be embedded in.