[oh-4-fucks-sake]

Because there's value in being able to differentiate between when a value is "truly absent" vs. a zero-length string. To take a trivial example with a simple API: a null string can carry the semantic that a value was (intentionally or not-intentionally) omitted in a request by a user/FE. What if that request schema grows to the point where there could be dozens of intentionally-omitted/optional fields--you then get into this awkward kind of scenario where either the FE must include those key-values as empty strings or the API must be able to interpret those omitted values and coerce them into empty strings. Even if a framework or whatever is abstracting that away from you--the can is getting kicked somewhere for someone to have to deal w/ the fact that other systems/langs--and their contracts--do, very much, have the concept of null.

[stonemetal12]

Why strings and not integers and doubles? Why strings and not structs? You have given plenty of reasons why nullability in general can be useful, but not why it is mandatory for strings to be nullable. Unless the core of your argument is C has null strings so now everyone must support that poor decision for interop purposes.

Personally I prefer how Protocol buffers handles not present strings compared to C. If you stick to std::string, C++ isn't bad either.