alt Hacker NewsEveryone hates null but (in database land, and arguably in other programming) it just means “no data.”
(As an aside, I found the characterisation of null as being a “billion dollar mistake” to be unfair. Those who don’t acknowledge null are doomed to reimplement it, probably poorly, or to have the unknowns in their logic remain unknown unknowns.)
The "mistake" was not in providing a way to represent "no data", it was in providing no way to represent "this definitely HAS" data.
Languages that correct the problem have two separate types (eg: Foo & Option<Foo>) meaning "definitely a Foo" and "a Foo but it might have no data". Java just has Foo, meaning "a Foo but it might have no data" but no way to represent "definitely a Foo".