It just seems like in a statically typed language, users should be more aware of nulls and handling them. Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems inherent in the pa

It just seems like in a statically typed language, users should be more aware of nulls and handling them. Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems inherent in the paradigm that you shouldn't be playing as loosely with null and not null pointers. You should be fully able to expect a value to be there or not, by virtue of the certainty of your types and your conventions. I suppose when you talk about a large codebase used by people who are unaware of your conventions then you can run into issues, but I'd imagine that either null serves a purpose in your system, or not. If it does, handle it with the appropriate logic, if not, you shouldn't have to worry. Dynamic typing would offer you the convention of inherently being uncertain about what you're receiving and being overly defensive about everything.