[Grace-core] [A Graceful Blog] Comment: "From Lancaster to Portland"

[Andrew P. Black]

On 26 Sep 2011, at 12:43, James Noble wrote:

>> My "naming alarm" has just gone off.
>> 
>> Surely, the type that permits any object should be called "Any", not None!
> 
> yep, you're right of course. 
> 
>> Remember, we have to be able to explain this stuff to students.  If I were  novice student, I would be very confused to find out that a type called None would accept anything.
> 
> which is why "Null" or "Nil" is probably a better name for this distinguished sentinel object than null

Big Mistake from Emerald: having a distinguished object whose type is None.

It's equivalent to Tony Hoare's "Billion dollar mistake", although of course, our's wasn't nearly that expensive.  Maybe $50.42 :-)

	Andrew