The Codeless Code: Case 115 Pain 
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 Reports of corrupted data had reached the ears of Java
master Banzen. After reviewing the code base he summoned a
certain monk to his office.

“You take great pains to avoid null-valued objects,” said
the master. “You initialize all Strings to empty, and coerce
nulls to empty when setting String-valued properties.
Furthermore you store the properties of your Data Transfer
Objects in primitives, causing null integer columns to be
read as zeroes and null booleans to be read as false.
Explain.”

The boy replied: “In my experience, our most common
production error is the NullPointerException. I seek to
minimize the occurences of this.”

Banzen thought a moment, then tossed a brass coin into his
fireplace and covered it deep with glowing coals. “Fetch the
coin with your bare fingers,” he said.

The monk attempted this feat three times, but each time he
withdrew his empty, burned fingers in pain.

Banzen then grabbed the boy’s upper arm, sought a particular
nerve, and pinched deeply. The pain stopped.

“Again,” ordered Banzen, still pressing on the nerve.

The monk repeated his efforts. He was pleased to discover
that he could toss aside the coals with ease, but his
pleasure turned to horror when he smelled and heard his own
flesh sizzling. Quickly he withdrew his blistered, burned
hand and dropped the coin onto the floor.

Banzen released the monk’s arm and left the room. The monk
required no further correction, except learning to type
left-handed.