How null references became the “Billion Dollar Mistake”
and what’s been done about it
8 min readAug 22, 2023
In 1965, the landscape of software development was forever altered by what seemed like a modest, logical, and perhaps even necessary introduction.
But as decades unfolded, this “small” addition would come to be known by a moniker that oozed regret: the “Billion Dollar Mistake”.