What are the disadvantages of self-encapsulation?
- by Dave Jarvis
Background
Tony Hoare's billion dollar mistake was the invention of null. Subsequently, a lot of code has become riddled with null pointer exceptions (segfaults) when software developers try to use (dereference) uninitialized variables.
In 1989, Wirfs-Brock and Wikerson wrote:
Direct references to variables severely limit the ability of…