>>12
Well, your experience is a shallow one indeed.
I take it you have never heard of invariant rules? Or class invariants? (I'm not an OOP fanatic, I think OOP is overrated, but class invariants are an often overlooked yet useful aspect of OOP that can be applied outside to other paradigms).
I program defensively, enforcing invariants in procedures and methods, using things like smart pointers, RAII, and applying runtime sanity checks in the form of asserts.
In fact, by correctly enforcing the invariant that a given pointer can never be null, I can write correct code without the bloat of runtime checks. Yes, this is extra stuff I have to keep track in my head, but given that my intellect is sufficient enough to do so, I take great pleasure in writing correct code without guiding rails.
If you want to program in your watered-down language with training wheels to stop you from catastrophic failure, go right ahead, I won't stop you. But I expect you to at least afford me the same freedoms.