The Golden Rule of Programming

[jconnop]

Welp. That's an interesting golden error.

Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vyvuBLO...

[pbosko]

"If database connection can be null, it will be null."

[damncabbage]

"If it can be null, it will be null"

So explicitly define what is allowed to ever be "null": http://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/null-pointers-vs-none-vs-m...

[bunderbunder]

Would that we could all just up and switch programming languages at the drop of a hat like that.

Explicitly defining what is ever allowed to be 'null' is a great habit that serves me extremely well during evenings and weekends. But it's completely useless to me, by virtue of being impossible, between 9am and 5pm.

[ciupicri]

Is Error establishing a database connection the golden rule of programming? :-)

[yen223]

It is the exception that proves the rule!

[spo81rty]

Sorry, MySQL and word press couldn't take the traffic I guess :-(

[gnuvince]

That's some Jedi Master type of rule right there.

[adamtulinius]

"if it can be null, it will be null"

And here comes a repetition of Maybe Foo in haskell, and Option in Scala/Java. Hehe :-)

[3amOpsGuy]

I'm not a C# coder but I understood it was possible to have non-nullable types?

Keep meaning to try C# for a project sometime. I understand it to be a more expressive, programmer friendly Java.

[bunderbunder]

Value types are non-nullable. But they're also stack-allocated* and passed by value, so they're really only appropriate in certain cases. You can't use them as general-purpose non-nullable objects.

*In practice, though technically that bit's an implementation detail of Microsoft's run-time and not part of the language spec.

[spo81rty]

For some data types. Strings and objects can always be nullable.

[PuercoPop]

Isn't it just an specific formulation of Murphy's Law? If something can go wrong it will. And that is not just the golden rule of programming, it's the golden rule of Life!

[spo81rty]

Sorry, MySQL crashed :-(

[shuma]

never knew that the golden rule was a database error.

[GiraffeNecktie]

For me, it's more of a "general rule" than a "golden rule".

[MJR]

This is deep. I believe the golden rule is to keep your database online.