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Objective-c allows you to send messages to null objects. On one hand it allows for a form of null-coalescing, but on the other it allows bugs to slip in and get the program into an unexpected state, whereas a more rigorous treatment would result in a more deterministic crash.

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It is part of what makes Objective-C phenomenally good for rapid development in the hands of competent developers. However, as team, and codebase sizes increase, it allows for subtle bugs by less competent developers.

It’s also very much related to its use in GUI hierarchies: GUI objects generally have a lot of properties and behaviours, most of which you often don’t care for at any given point. Nil being a shorthand for “do nothing” without needing explicit checking is very convenient.

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