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by willtim 2145 days ago
> Pretending it doesn't exist would cause more trouble in the real world than letting it be

I don't agree at all with this point. RDBMS types for example are non-nullable by default. Protobufs, XML and many other exchange formats also have optional types but not null added to every type. If you want better interoperability with programming languages, I think it would be better to go after e.g. IEE754 support.
1 comments
kstenerud 2145 days ago
The default nullability of RDBMS types is implementation-specific. Protobufs requires a lot of ugly workarounds for languages such as Java to handle the language's nullable types. You can't eliminate the complexity; only move it, and protobufs moved it in a way that punishes languages with nullable types. XML at least works via omission, but that doesn't handle the case of explicitly signalling "no data", which is a valid signal in many languages.

Concise Encoding does support IEEE754.

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willtim 2143 days ago
> You can't eliminate the complexity; only move it,

Yes and by using null-in-every type for your messaging, now you've pushed the problem out of your app and published it to the world.

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kstenerud 2143 days ago
Precisely.
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