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Explore the intricacies of null references in .NET in this comprehensive conference talk by Stefan Pölz at NDC London. Dive into the notorious "billion-dollar mistake" of null references while discovering how they serve as valuable mechanisms for expressing optionality and resource unavailability. Learn about modern tools that help prevent System.NullReferenceException errors, including IDE diagnostics and compile-time analyzers. Understand C# 8.0's nullable reference types feature and how it improves API design by clearly communicating nullability intent. The presentation covers nullable reference types, their accompanying BCL attributes, representation in Reflection Metadata and the Roslyn API, and related keywords and operators. Discover the fundamental differences between nullable reference types and nullable value types in .NET, and explore the null object pattern as an alternative approach to representing "nothing" while maintaining semantic clarity.
