Why is “null” present in C# and Java?

Question

We noticed that lots of bugs in our software developed in C# (or Java) cause a NullReferenceException.

Is there a reason why \"null\" has even been included in the l

Answer 1

I'm surprised no one has talked about databases for their answer. Databases have nullable fields, and any language which will be receiving data from a DB needs to handle that. That means having a null value.

In fact, this is so important that for basic types like int you can make them nullable!

Also consider return values from functions, what if you wanted to have a function divide a couple numbers and the denominator could be 0? The only "correct" answer in such a case would be null. (I know, in such a simple example an exception would likely be a better option... but there can be situations where all values are correct but valid data can produce an invalid or uncalculable answer. Not sure an exception should be used in such cases...)