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while Java originated the billion dollar mistake By the "billion dollar mistake", are you referring to null references [1]? But null references were introduced
by quanticle 3y ago
while Java originated the billion dollar mistake
By the "billion dollar mistake", are you referring to null references [1]? But null references were introduced in 1965 in Algol, by Tony Hoare. They long predate Java.
[1]: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Billion-Dollar-Mistake-Tony-Hoare/ https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Bill...
- self_awareness 3y agoI don't think it's about the existence of null references, but how Java is using them. Null references can be a useful, e.g. Kotlin has converted them to be useful (with nullable types).
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoUsing nulls in Java is mostly a choice on the part of developers; even if you can't migrate to a JVM-targeted language like Scala, you can still adopt practices like null objects [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_object_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_object_pattern
- saurik 3y agoSpeaking of Go and Algol... http://cowlark.com/2009-11-15-go/ http://cowlark.com/2009-11-15-go/