Guys, we are not talking about null pointers but null references in general, doesnt matter if its C/C++ NULL pointer or null reference in C#/Java. Null references are not _needed_ Most of the times there are used: - as return values from functions to denote failure, exceptions should be used - lazy initialization when the state is preserveed somewhere and we dont want to create an empty object, polymorphic wrapper data type should be used Null pointers exists because of Object Oriented paradigm which is governed by states, and you need to have ability to say that a state is invalid. It is not a feature of allocation library or execution enviroment In functional world and languages like OCaml or Haskell, there is no requirment of having null references, there could be and empty list or special type wrapping above cases (option in ocaml and Maybe in Haskell). This monad allows also to push code checks against the value into the monad itself, using higher order function (which will be passed into combinator and only called when the value of the type is not `null') Most of the cases when code fails with huge bang, exception or seamlessly doesnt execute is determined by existences of null pointers.

So how the binaries of Linux embeded in Android are compiled? No one calls Android Linux that's the point but call it Anroid. So why we dont call Linux just GNU as it is build on top of that (or Linux is build on top of GNU?) Thanks

Unfortuantely, wihtout GNU there wouldn't be anything like GNU/Linux. Linux is the kernel `only' and it is not a whole system, it is as esential to run the system as other core components (like Shell) so let's limit the scope and call the kernel only - Linux. What would you do with kernel only? How would you compile your kernel? Under which licence it would be? Many components that form modern distributions are not a part of the Linux kernel, but they are put into on bag and called Linux, which is plain wrong. (somebody did mention about X11 and GNOME and KDE running on top of that? they are also eseential part for most of users). Because GNU/Linux is mainly component based, and not monotlitic like windows, it implies ambiguites with resolving to who we should thank (basically). That's part of the OpenSource philosophy.
Binutils and Coreutils are essential part of every GNU/Linux distribution, there wouldn't be Shell, gcc for compiling packages, auto make packaging system if GNU didn't exist. Linux kernel is also very dependent on gcc, at least gcc is used to compile it. So, let's call it(with a little bit space) Linux kernel now, but Linux distros as GNU/Linux.