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Comment by rtpg

One thing I think worth considering for systems languages on this point: if you don't want to solve every expressiveness issue downstream of Result/Option/etc from the outset, look at Swift, which has nullable types.

MyObject can't be null. MyObject? can be null. Handling nullability as a special thing might help with the billion-dollar mistake without generating pressure to have a fully fleshed out ADT solution and everything downstream of that.

To people who would dismiss ADTs as a hard problem in terms of ergonomics: Rust makes it less miserable thanks to things like the question-mark shorthand and a bazillion trait methods. Languages like Haskell solve it with a monads + do syntax + operating overload galore. Languages like Scala _don't_ solve it for Result/Option in any fun way and thus are miserable on this point IMHO

parent rtpg 10 months ago

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