[zanata-devel] Contrarian thoughts on null pointers, null objects, empty collections and Optional

[Sean Flanigan]

On 2015-02-16 18:25, Jens Petersen wrote:
>> Here's that article I mentioned.  Some interesting ideas in here.
>>
>> http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/787668/Why-We-Should-Love-null
>>
>> Whether or not you agree with welcoming back nulls, the idea of treating
>> empty collections as an important special case might have some merit.
>>
>> The follow-up articles "Is it Really Better to 'Return an Empty List
>> Instead of null'?" are quite good too.
> 
> Just an OT side comment: I just got back from devconf.cz
> where there were a number of Java/JBoss talks (I didn't attend:).
> 
> I noticed http://kotlinlang.org/ which looks potentially
> interesting (since there was a talk about it too).
> 
> "Avoid having to work with pesky null reference exception checks."
> - just to get vaguely back on topic. ;) :)
> 
> Jens

Kotlin does look interesting, but the only IDE for it is IntelliJ, so
there's a bit of lock-in to consider.  The same goes for Xtend and
Ceylon, which are (more or less) Eclipse-only right now.

On the bright side, (and getting further away from the topic of null
safety), I think we might be able to use Java 8 for Zanata before too
much longer.  Just need a few operational cogs to fall into place.


-- 
Sean Flanigan

Senior Software Engineer
Engineering - Internationalisation
Red Hat

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