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SUMMARY:IC Colloquium: Taming null references
DTSTART:20211206T161500
DTEND:20211206T171500
DTSTAMP:20260407T002933Z
UID:4227a6652e2af1d700780d0cd8a429d72a1ffbef6a2448b83dd02ead
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:By: Ondřej Lhoták - University of Waterloo\nVideo of his tal
 k\n\nAbstract\nNull references have been called the Billion Dollar Mistake
  in programming language design for all the errors\, crashes\, and vulnera
 bilities that they have caused over several decades. If null references ar
 e so bad\, why do popular programming languages still promote their use? D
 o they have essential use cases?\n\nI will report on our efforts to elimin
 ate the disadvantages of null references while keeping support for existin
 g programming idioms. Our implementation is in the Scala language\, but ou
 r conclusions can also help designers of other new programming languages.\
 n\nMost uses of null references can be classified as either implementing o
 ptional values or initializing groups of related objects. For the former u
 se case\, practical alternatives exist\, so the main challenge is retainin
 g compatibility with existing codebases. The latter use case requires more
  fundamental changes in language design\, type systems\, and static analys
 is to ensure safety while still allowing widely used data structures and i
 nitialization patterns.\n\nBio\nOndřej Lhoták is an Associate Professor 
 at the University of Waterloo and a Visiting Professor in the LAMP group a
 t EPFL until June 2022.\nHis research interests are in static reasoning ab
 out the behaviour of programs in object-oriented programming languages\, w
 ith a particular focus on Scala.\n\nMore information
LOCATION:BC 420 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20420 https://epfl.zoom.us/
 j/63238026909?pwd=Y0poWEpadW9zVU5DSU9Ed3crN0tkUT09
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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