Timeline for Are null references really a bad thing?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
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| Mar 12, 2014 at 22:42 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by sea-rob | ||
| Oct 19, 2010 at 0:52 | comment | added | luis.espinal | Ah, I didn't explain myself clearly. It is not that it is more difficult to deal with nulls. It is that it is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to guarantee that all access to potentially null references are already safe-guarded. That is, in a language that allows null references, it is just impossible to guarantee that a piece of code of arbitrary size is free of null pointer exceptions, not without through some major difficulties and efforts. That's what make null references an expensive thing. It is extremely expensive to guarantee complete absence of null pointer exceptions. | |
| Oct 18, 2010 at 20:10 | comment | added | Tim Goodman | It might be helpful if you included an example where it takes a lot more effort to deal with nulls. In my admittedly over-simplified example the effort is about the same either way. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just find specific (pseudo)code examples paint a clearer picture than general statements. | |
| Oct 18, 2010 at 19:44 | history | answered | luis.espinal | CC BY-SA 2.5 |