4 ms·
nil pointer panics aren't nearly as bad as values getting zero initialized, then used in places that assume they were initialized, and getting subtle bugs becau
by thayne 2mo ago
nil pointer panics aren't nearly as bad as values getting zero initialized, then used in places that assume they were initialized, and getting subtle bugs because the state is inconsistent.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- win311fwg 2mo agoI always wonder how those types of mistakes make it through your test suite. You'd need some kind of non-deterministic path to reaching the unintended zero value — but it would need to be a non-deterministic path that you wouldn't make deterministic during testing. I think we'd be curious to see what that code looks like.
- 0x696C6961 2mo agoAgain, it happens, but the impact is wildly overstated. I get so confused with people saying "once it compiles, it probably works" (regardless of language). The problems I struggle with need invariants that can't be expressed by any modern language features.