Why can you assign Nothing to an Integer in VB.NET?

Question

Why am I allowed to assign Nothing to a value-type in VB.NET:

Dim x as Integer = Nothing

But I\'m not allowed to assign

Answer 1

The equivalent C# code looks like this:

int x;
x = default(int);

Note that for reference types, the same still holds:

Dim y As Object
y = Nothing

That VB.Net code would look like this if mapped directly to C#:

object y;
y = default(object);

It's just a nice thing that the default for object (or any other reference type) in .Net is null. So we see that VB.Net's Nothing is not a direct analog to C#'s null, at least when used with value types.