Look, I get it: Null pointer exceptions are annoying but so is having to constantly check every object . against null. Is this the new religion after OOP and FP are being phased out? Null just means that the object is not initialized. It's useful to indicate such a state. If you just force yourself to initialize every object to some empty value then you're going to end up passing around empty strings - but wait, an empty string might intentionally be empty or it might indicate "please fill me".
Because I can already tell you what massive insights will come out soon: That null is actually not a mistake at all, it's useful. And the most ironic part about all this? These same people who hate