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Products => Computers => Programming => Topic started by: Sherlock Holmes on January 03, 2023, 10:52:36 pm

Title: Lecture by Tony Hoare: Billion dollar mistake
Post by: Sherlock Holmes on January 03, 2023, 10:52:36 pm

Fascinating and amusing, sit back, pour a brew and enjoy...

Null References The Billion Dollar Mistake (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYkOWzrO3xg).

Title: Re: Lecture by Tony Hoare: Billion dollar mistake
Post by: mfro on January 09, 2023, 05:56:49 pm

Is there a job prerequisite for British computer scientists that they have to look like Clive Sinclair?  :-//

Title: Re: Lecture by Tony Hoare: Billion dollar mistake
Post by: Marco on January 09, 2023, 06:20:35 pm

Meh, NULL references mostly just cause crashes. If NULL references are a billion dollar mistake, NULL ended strings are a trillion dollar mistake.

Title: Re: Lecture by Tony Hoare: Billion dollar mistake
Post by: SiliconWizard on January 09, 2023, 07:46:13 pm

While I highly regard Tony Hoare, I still find little relevance to this particular point about "NULL". A lot of talk about not much.
I think that's barking up the wrong tree. Unfortunately, this point has had a lot more influence on programming language design than many, much more relevant concepts that Tony Hoare has devised and that people have kept conveniently ignoring. Just my opinion.