[jez]

For another perspective on "lying to the compiler," I enjoyed the section on Loopholes in Niklaus Wirth's "Good Ideas, Through the Looking Glass"[1]. An excerpt:

Experience showed that normal users will not shy away from using the loophole, but rather enthusiastically grab on to it as a wonderful feature that they use wherever possible. This is particularly so if manuals caution against its use.

[...]

The presence of a loophole facility usually points to a deficiency in the language proper, revealing that certain things could not be expressed.

Wirth's use of loophole most closely aligns with the unchecked casts that the article uses. I don't think exceptions amount to lying to the compiler. They amount more to assuming for sake of contradiction, which is not quite lying (e.g., AFSOC is a valid proof technique, but proofs can be wrong). Null as a form of lying is not the fault of the programmer, that's more the fault of the language, so again doesn't feel like lying.

[1] https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/Articles/GoodIdeas.pdf