[derekchiang]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Rust[1] yet. It's a systems programming language that has managed to get rid of null pointers by carefully controlling the ways in which a a value can be constructed[2].

[1] http://www.rust-lang.org/

[2] https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Doc-language-FAQ#how-do...

[Dewie]

And IIRC the compiler translates usages of None to null, so any complaint about inefficiency probably does not apply in this case, either.

[dietrichepp]

This is actually quite common in languages which support ADTs—you stick tags in the pointer to discriminate between subtypes of a union.

[Jare]

I don't think Rust is such a shining example of a solid language in this area, at least not yet. For example: http://stackoverflow.com/a/20704252/626867

[pcwalton]

That has nothing to do with null pointers, and that was agreed to be changed today.

[azth]

The SO issue you linked to has nothing to do with null pointers.