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Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:22:43 +0100
From: Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>
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Subject: Re: not null
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Date: 2009-03-04T16:22:44+01:00
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Hyman Rosen schrieb:
> Georg Bauhaus wrote:
>> As said to have been seen on /.
>> another financial disaster, again caused
>> by making references to nothing, in Algol W,
>> http://qconlondon.com/london-2009/presentation/Null+References:+The+Billion+Dollar+Mistake
>>
> 
> You are misreading the abstract. First of all, it's not
> about some particular incident. He's talking about the
> overall impact. Second, he's not talking about failure
> to check for null references, he's talking about having
> null references at all, so Ada is no better.

I didn't want to imply that Ada is any better WRT having
null refs. Except, perhaps, that some language lawyers
have said they would rather have wanted not null
to be the default, which is closer to not having
any null references in the first place.

The overall impact of refs not "attached" (to use
an Eiffel term; not null is spreading through languages
it seems; C++, too?) is a financial disaster, with
possibly one exception: there is money in a business
selling software components whose purpose is to guard
the holes kept open by operating system sellers.

(Antivirus etc.)