[quanticle]

    while Java originated the billion dollar mistake

By the "billion dollar mistake", are you referring to null references [1]? But null references were introduced in 1965 in Algol, by Tony Hoare. They long predate Java.

[1]: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Bill...

[self_awareness]

I don't think it's about the existence of null references, but how Java is using them. Null references can be a useful, e.g. Kotlin has converted them to be useful (with nullable types).

[Cthulhu_]

Using nulls in Java is mostly a choice on the part of developers; even if you can't migrate to a JVM-targeted language like Scala, you can still adopt practices like null objects [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_object_pattern

[saurik]

Speaking of Go and Algol...

http://cowlark.com/2009-11-15-go/