[gingerBill]

In the first case in a language with type inference, I'd argue it would probably be written a bit different. And probably something like the following two cases:

    x := &bar
    if is_foo { x = &foo }
    // or
    x := &foo if is_foo else &bar

I know this is a simple example, but it's kind just a different way to think about the problem. Sometimes the default C way of having to specify the type first is a good enough of a nudge away to not do when you can just infer the type from the expression. Especially when this variable is being used not as a variable in itself but as an alias for another. The place where it is more likely to have a `nil` pointer due to no explicit initialization in Odin would be within a struct, rather than on its own on the stack.

In the second case, Odin's approach would probably just not even do that, but rather `f, b := grab_data()`. The use of `&` is when it needs to be an in-out parameter (i.e. read and write to), which means it has different functionality.