> Having all references that are returned from C be treated as Option types would resolve this difficulty, no?
Perhaps, but there's more than just returns. Dealing with most C code there's a fair bit of pointer passing and manipulation. It's nice being able to deal directly with C code and not have to worry about the impedance mismatch, but still be able to move up the type system. It's more a pragmatic choice.
> Likewise, your type system can prevent you from using uninitialized values in other languages, without the need for Option (and indeed the unwrap() call you imply you would have used) from being needed.
In this case, mostly its just me not using the type system well. :-) But that's the price I pay for a using a flexible language I can readily use in embedded work. NPE's really don't cause me any headaches compared to most of the other aspects of integrating heavily with C code in embedded systems.
Same reason as using unsafe Rust to interface w/ C/C++, to wrap the the unsafe bits and make safer API's asap. Nim's macros also making interactions with C API's safer. To be clear, I'll be glad when Nim checks these things by default (the Z3 checker will be great for that!).
Perhaps, but there's more than just returns. Dealing with most C code there's a fair bit of pointer passing and manipulation. It's nice being able to deal directly with C code and not have to worry about the impedance mismatch, but still be able to move up the type system. It's more a pragmatic choice.
> Likewise, your type system can prevent you from using uninitialized values in other languages, without the need for Option (and indeed the unwrap() call you imply you would have used) from being needed.
In this case, mostly its just me not using the type system well. :-) But that's the price I pay for a using a flexible language I can readily use in embedded work. NPE's really don't cause me any headaches compared to most of the other aspects of integrating heavily with C code in embedded systems.