Right.  C++ does not allow null references.  I&#x27;ve seen this before from the &quot;I can use null references because I know what I&#x27;m doing.&quot; crowd.  It&#x27;s really a problem of C++, though, that it&#x27;s possible to create null references. References were an afterthought in C++ (Strostup admits &quot;this&quot; should have been a reference) and it shows.  The abstraction is leaky.<p>Rust is stricter about references not being null, as in you get a compile time error if you try.