It's not what programming languages do, it's what they shepherd you to

Re:It's not what programming languages do, it's what they sh... by Dylan16807 on Friday March 27, 2020 @04:59AM (#22701312)

> Also, it is certainly an improvement, but having `Foo?` as a type is still less explicit than having `Maybe<Foo>` as a type. If you miss the question mark, you can still have null pointer exceptions.

A perfect example of Stroustrup's Rule.

  * For new features, people insist on LOUD explicit syntax.
  * For established features, people want terse notation.

A question mark is concise, but it's just as explicit. The risk of people glossing over it isn't much worse, and avoiding tons of repeated keywords has benefits to comprehension.

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Re:It's not what programming languages do, it's what they sh... by lstamour on Saturday March 28, 2020 @10:24AM (#22711304)

The only problem I have is the new syntax has trained me to expect a ? when null is possible, and null is not allowed if ? is missing, but in older libraries not yet updated to C# 8 Nullable Types, not having a ? means null is allowed. So reading the syntax in my IDE is a lot harder as sometimes an un-annotated type means null is allowed and sometimes not. I wish in cross-over projects there was the option to use ! to say null shouldn’t be allowed, thus visually and temporarily distinguishing new from old code, and to that end, the ! could be inserted as an overlay by my IDE, I suppose... Maybe I should try to write an IDE plug-in for this, or have a look for one.

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