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by banthar 3575 days ago
I'm guessing this mostly happens during serialization to and from strings. One programmer does String.valueOf(x) instead of x.toString() to prevent NullPointerExceptions. This works pretty well until the next guy does x == null || x.equals("null") because "null"s pop up in UI. At this point this is irreversible as nobody can tell what is null and what is "null".