All these concepts like optional markupfiles, identifying objects by id, creating objects from markupfiles and WYSIWG editors also exist for the xaml(which is a Dsl) and C++ stack.
Its just that microsofts usage and tools are crap like every other microsoft software
I guess you ask for C++. There Type* can be null while Type& can't be null. When it gets compiled Type& is compiled (mostly) to the same machinecode as Type*.
All people say it. Tremendous code. All the experts said "No, generating formatted random text is not working code" but we did it.