On Sunday, 26 May 2013 at 00:35:32 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
It was Hoare's engaging presentation on it that turned it into a cause celebre.
Certainly not. But obviously, it become an important reference in it.
Null pointers aren't even remotely the source of most programming bugs. If they were, then languages that disallow them would be super-productive in comparison. But they aren't. They're just an incremental step, and elevating it into a "deal breaker" is frankly ridiculous.
Most ICE in DMD are cause by assert fail on null pointers.
