On: What if null was an Object in Java?

[specialist]

Apologies, I omitted part of my proposal:

While most Null Objects would (probably) be code generated, you can provide your own as needed.

Said another way: Most of my Null Object implementations have been boilerplate, and therefore could be code generated. But occasionally some are not.

[int_19h → specialist]

What I mean is that semantically there's often no such thing as a null object for a given domain. So any artificial one that can be made is indistinguishable from null in practice (i.e. all operations on it will throw etc).