[tatut]

This is backwards. Rich did not advocate for changes that break promises.

The point in the talk is that "strengthening a promise" should not be a breaking change. Changing return type from "T or NULL" to always returning T. The case where you previously couldn't guarantee a result, but now you can.

The other case "relaxing a requirement" also should not be a problem. The case where you previously had to give me a value, but now I don't need it and can do my calculation without it.

[bunderbunder]

TBH, I'm happy with that being a breaking change, too. Just keep returning a T? that happens to always have a value until the next major version # increment (or whatever), and then make the breaking change, and then I get a clear signal that I can delete some lines of code.

The alternative seems like a path that, in any decently complex software project, ultimately leads to an accumulation of useless cruft that'll probably continue to grow over time as people keep copy/pasting code that contained the now-useless null-handling logic.