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Retrofitting null-safety onto Java at Meta

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Re: Retrofitting null-safety onto Java at Meta

#4
Related work: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/nullable-reference-typ...

C# has made it possible to gradually roll out stricter nullability checking as well. The static analysis gets integrated into the regular language analyzers. Incremental migration is the only way to go.

Re: Retrofitting null-safety onto Java at Meta

#5

Or use Kotlin, it's near perfectly interoperable with Java and the acclamation period is measured in weeks if you're a Java dev

As they point out, they already have some Kotlin and use it interoperably, but "rewrite existing code in Kotlin" is not a realistic demand.

Re: Retrofitting null-safety onto Java at Meta

#7

Or use Kotlin, it's near perfectly interoperable with Java and the acclamation period is measured in weeks if you're a Java dev

I can't think of any popular language that would take more than a few days to get acclimated to as an experienced developer, so that's not a very compelling argument.

Re: Retrofitting null-safety onto Java at Meta

#9

Or use Kotlin, it's near perfectly interoperable with Java and the acclamation period is measured in weeks if you're a Java dev

I can't think of any popular language that would take more than a few days to get acclimated to as an experienced developer, so that's not a very compelling argument.

Ooof, I think most devs can modify an existing code base in a few days. To learn all the idiomatic styles, tradeoffs of the major libraries and different build systems take months, maybe years IMHO.

Re: Retrofitting null-safety onto Java at Meta

#10

Or use Kotlin, it's near perfectly interoperable with Java and the acclamation period is measured in weeks if you're a Java dev

I can't think of any popular language that would take more than a few days to get acclimated to as an experienced developer, so that's not a very compelling argument.

Well, C and Scala are some counter examples that immediately come to mind.

Kotlin is probably more similar to Java than any other mainstream language. There’s almost no learning curve there, while going from Java to other “easy” languages like Python requires significantly more time to get used to.

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