[shhsshs]

> That said, for me personally, nil punning is uncomfortably close to the kind of weak typing (like in traditional JS) that can be catastrophic in large code bases.

I think it would be totally fine and safe if “nil” is identical to an empty list in every scenario. In other words, nil is just a shorthand/synonym for an empty list.

Go kind of does that, for example. The only time it’s actually handled differently in my experience is in JSON serialization (which I personally believe was a terrible decision)

[monoideism]

> I think it would be totally fine and safe if “nil” is identical to an empty list in every scenario

Yes, I agree. But even in Scheme, that's not the case. I'm not familiar enough w/Go to comment - I'll have to check it out.