[mattnewton]

One has to be addressed at compile time and the other is a runtime error. Sure, you can address it wrong, but it's better than any reference anywhere being able to throw and in my experience really does cut down on application crashes.

[magicalhippo]

Interesting. I've been coding in languages which heavily rely on pointers for decades, primarily C, C++, C# and Turbo Pascal/Delphi, and in my experience nil pointer errors are quite rare.

I agree that it's nice to be explicit about optional stuff, but overall it's not been a huge deal in the projects I've been involved with.