On Sunday, 2 February 2014 at 12:42:47 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
On Sunday, February 02, 2014 12:52:44 Timon Gehr wrote:
On 02/02/2014 04:39 AM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> I'm not sure how I feel about that, particularly since I
> haven't seen such
> data myself. My natural reaction when people complain about
> null pointer
> problems is that they're sloppy programmers (which isn't
> necessarily fair,
> but that's my natural reaction).
There is no such thing as 'naturality' that is magically able
to justify
personal attacks in a technical discussion, even if qualified.
Would you prefer that I had said "initial reaction" or "gut
reaction?" I'm
just saying that that's how I tend to feel when I see
complaints about null
pointers. I have never accused anyone of anything or otherwise
attacked them
because they complained about null pointers. That _would_ be
rude.
The situation does not have to be unbearable in order to
improve it!
True, but I don't even agree that null pointers are that big a
deal in the
first place. If we really want to add non-nullable pointers or
references to
the language, then we can. I don't think that that's
necessarily a bad idea.
But I doubt that I'll use them often, and I do think that the
whole issue is
frequently blown out of proportion.
- Jonathan M Davis
Ideally you'd be using them wherever you use objects and
pointers, as they'd be the default.
