[leapis]

Nullable is a huge issue in Java, but annotation-based nullability frameworks are both effective and pervasive in the ecosystem (and almost mandatory, IMO).

I'm really excited about https://jspecify.dev/, which is an effort by Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc to standardize annotations, starting with @Nullable.

[kaashif]

This can never be as effective as changing the default reference type to be not nullable, which would break backwards compatibility, so you can never really relax.

I know Kotlin is basically supposed to be that, it has a lot of other stuff though, and I haven't used it much.

[martindevans]

That's basically what c# has done. But it's implemented as a warning which can be upgraded to an error. I think it might even be an error by default in new projects now.

[foolfoolz]

they won’t change the default reference type to non null. might take a few years but you can see their planned syntax here: https://openjdk.org/jeps/401

[wayfinder]

I hope they succeed. So many people have tried.

[mrkeen]

Not having nulls is easy.

Persuading Java devs not to use nulls is hard.

[mrkeen]

I was just writing about nullability annotations!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37534184

[netheril96]

Nullable annotations don’t work with well with generics, or at least those tools I use.