[sebhack]

Good article. Suggestion: When you post an article like this to hacker news it would help to include the programming language in the title, like "Getting rid of NULL (in PHP)". I wasn't aware that this is a PHP-related post until I've read the first bunch of paragraphs until you actually mention "PHP".

[diggan]

I'm not sure that's necessary, it's not a PHP specific post. The author is just using PHP to demonstrate his point. Most, if not all object oriented languages should be able to replicate this functionality.

[lfowles]

I had just read the C++ Hints post from last Friday ("Use nullptr instead of NULL from now on"[0]) and expecting that the link to go there.

[0]: http://cpphints.com/hints/44

[jcyw]

I was expecting Java8 Optional...

[iamrohitbanga]

Or Ruby 2.3's lonely operator (&.) or swift's optional chaining (?.)