On Friday, 10 July 2020 at 03:59:37 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
On Thursday, 9 July 2020 at 21:13:49 UTC, JN wrote:
Interesting. Often in D discussion, an argument pops up that
the language should be protecting against hidden breakages
from API changes. This would be an example of that happening.
void foo(int[int] bar), someone calls it with a null, suddenly
the signature changes to void foo(int* bar) and you will be
sending a null pointer and possibly breaking the app.
Meh. You could say the same about foo(int[]), or
foo(SomeClass). AAs are reference types. Reference type
instances can be null.
Besides, when it comes to breakage, the discussions I've seen are
about breaking changes in the language/compiler. There are
opportunities in most (if not all) programming languages to
introduce silent breakage when a library maintainer changes a
public-facing API. And when it happens, that's not the fault of
the language, but the library maintainer.
