[atherton94027]

Genuinely curious, how would you handle cases where a value is unset without NULL? This is a legitimate case that happens a lot in eg data modeling

[clnhlzmn]

The way we do it in modern languages with things like std::optional and even that is not the best example.

[MBCook]

And higher level languages that works. But what do you do when you get down to low level C or assembly?

You basically end up with null/0 don’t you?

[pdimitar]

Sum types, of course.

[jibal]

They already said:

> use the type system to help us use special values safely

... but this is not the place to explain what a type system is or what sum types/maybe/optional/etc. are.