I disagree. If null was like Maybe, than you should be able to do: E foo; ... foo=foo.bar().bat() without having to do a null check after each function. I th

I disagree. If null was like Maybe, than you should be able to do: E foo; ... foo=foo.bar().bat() without having to do a null check after each function. I think that Java's approach has the worst of both worlds, because there is no way to make foo.bar().bat() safe when a function could return null. In C, for example, calling a method on a null object does not cause an error. Rather it passes in null as the 'this' value, allowing you to do you null checks within the method.