Timeline for What are the advantages/disadvantages of distinguishing statements and expressions?

8 events

when toggle format	what		by	license	comment
Jun 9, 2023 at 19:42	vote	accept	Aman Grewal
Jun 2, 2023 at 23:09	history	edited	kaya3	CC BY-SA 4.0	added 170 characters in body
Jun 2, 2023 at 23:00	comment	added	kaya3		Yes, nullable types and optional types aren't the same, and also e.g. primitive `int` types generally can't be made nullable and have no niche for a sentinel `None` value in an undiscriminated union (like C's unions).
Jun 2, 2023 at 22:59	comment	added	Bbrk24		Swift's optional is a tagged union, so `Optional<Int16>` is 3 bytes and `Optional<Int64>` is 9 bytes, for example.
Jun 2, 2023 at 22:58	comment	added	Aman Grewal		I can't speak for other languages, but is there a difference between "optional types" and a language (like C) that supports both null pointers and union types?
Jun 2, 2023 at 22:54	comment	added	kaya3		@AmanGrewal All of the old-school imperative languages don't have option types in their standard libraries ─ C for example. Java didn't until 2014.
Jun 2, 2023 at 22:51	comment	added	Aman Grewal		That's interesting, I certainly would not have thought about how this affects the type system. Do you have an example of a language that doesn't have an option type?
Jun 2, 2023 at 22:46	history	answered	kaya3	CC BY-SA 4.0