Hacker News Reader

c# has an option type. You can make any struct type nullable with a ?.

The issue is you can't make reference types non-nullable (yet, they're working towards that end for 8.0).

Those interested in how C# 8.0 approaches the problem might appreciate Mads Torgersen's thoughts on the matter [0] (relevant part starts at 5:40).

[0] https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Seth-Juarez/A-Preview-of-C-8...

Do you know how they're solving the problem of the language expecting a `default(T)` to exist for every type?

You can get a pretty complete overview at https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/11/15/nullable-...

But essentially they're not solving it: you will get a warning on explicit default-ing of a non-nullable reference, you will get a warning on implicitly initialising/defaulting class fields, but you will not get warnings when doing so for structs or arrays.

Thanks. That looks quite interesting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com