Why does Map.of not allow null keys and values?

Question

With Java 9, new factory methods have been introduced for the List, Set and Map interfaces. These methods allow quickly instantiating a Ma

Answer 1

In my opinion non-nullability makes sense for keys, but not for values.

1. The Map interface becomes a weak contract, you can't trust it's behaviour without looking at the implementation, and that is assuming you have access to see it. Java11's Map.of() does not allow null values while HashMap does, but they both implement the same Map contract - how come?
2. Having a null value or no value at all could not, and arguably should not be considered as a distinct scenario. When you get the value for a key and you get null, who cares if it was explicitly put there or not? there's simply no value for the supplied key, the map does not contain such key, simple as that. Null is null, there's no nullnull or null^2
3. Existing libraries make extensive use of map as a means to pass properties to them, many of them optional, this makes Map.of() useless as a construct for such structures.
4. Kotlin enforces nullability at compile time and allows for maps with null values with no known issues.
5. The reason behind not allowing null values is probably just due to implementation detail and convenience of the creator.

Answer 2

As others pointed out, the Map contract allows rejecting nulls...

[S]ome implementations prohibit null keys and values [...]. Attempting to insert an ineligible key or value throws an unchecked exception, typically NullPointerException or ClassCastException.

... and the collection factories (not just on maps) make use of that.

They disallow null keys and values. Attempts to create them with null keys or values result in NullPointerException.

But why?

Allowing null in collections is by now seen as a design error. This has a variety of reasons. A good one is usability, where the most prominent trouble maker is Map::get. If it returns null, it is unclear whether the key is missing or the value was null. Generally speaking, collections that are guaranteed null free are easier to use. Implementation-wise, they also require less special casing, making the code easier to maintain and more performant.

You can listen to Stuart Marks explain it in this talk but JEP 269 (the one that introduced the factory methods) summarizes it as well:

Null elements, keys, and values will be disallowed. (No recently introduced collections have supported nulls.) In addition, prohibiting nulls offers opportunities for a more compact internal representation, faster access, and fewer special cases.

Since HashMap was already out in the wild when this was slowly discovered, it was too late to change it without breaking existing code but most recent implementations of those interfaces (e.g. ConcurrentHashMap) do not allow null anymore and the new collections for the factory methods are no exception.

(I thought another reason was that explicitly using null values was seen as a likely implementation error but I got that wrong. That was about to duplicate keys, which are illegal as well.)

So disallowing null had some technical reason but it was also done to improve the robustness of the code using the created collections.