set [null] = null? (or "Burninate [null]?")

Question

In my opinion, the null tag is not helpful for anyone. Even if this tag matches the content of the question, it might be a bit too specific.

I'm not a programmer. What are your opinions on burninating the tag?

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The null tag has four tagged questions:

• Reducing cyclomatic complexity in a simple string concatenation
• A custom Java collection which doesn't support nulls
• Handling nil: Trying to avoid #try
• Null Object pattern with simple class hierarchy

(Thanks for the title suggestion by lol.upvote)

Answer 1

Considering that Tony Hoare calls the invention of the null pointer a "billion dollar mistake", I think it's a very worthy concern for software developers, on par with exception-handling, comments, or naming. Also, the treatment of NULLs in SQL is tricky. If a developer has a question about the handling of nulls, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to tag that concern.

Answer 2

This tag does not seem to provide any particular value to questions, and doesn't always mean the same thing on different questions according to the tag description. Additionally, I'm not too sure exception-handling, comments, and naming are that great of tags either (see other answer).