What does it mean by "Remove the concept of "null" from your preferred language" ? about back-end-developer-interview-questions HOT 2 CLOSED

Hi @monklof
Thank you for the question!

You are right, it's not clear at all. Tony Hoare who invented the null reference once said

"I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965. At that time, I was designing the first comprehensive type system for references in an object oriented language (ALGOL W). My goal was to ensure that all use of references should be absolutely safe, with checking performed automatically by the compiler. But I couldn't resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years.'

In fact, some languages tried to eliminate the possibility to have null references, for example using Option types instead.

The question wanted to be something like "imagine you want to remove the possibility to have null references in your preferred language: what consequences could this have?"

As soon as at a pc, I'll try to enhance the question. Do you have any suggestions?

from back-end-developer-interview-questions.

@arialdomartini Thanks, I get it. No suggestions at the moment. 😊

from back-end-developer-interview-questions.