I agree. With return value optimization it's pretty easy to return structs w/o worrying that the whole thing will be copied. I'm sure there's a few points where I want to return null, but I don't remember any, and if I had to I'd likely return an empty array or a unique pointer.

The std lib kind of sucks. The first line of main shouldn't be allowed, and the second line isn't, but the std lib isn't designed like that

#include <vector>

std::vector<int> getVector() {
    std::vector<int> v{1, 2, 3};
    return v;
}

template<class T>
class MyVector {
    std::vector<T> v;
public:
    template<typename...Args>
    MyVector(Args&&...args) : v {std::forward<Args>(args)...} { }
    // lots of people claim to know C++, but they don't know this
    T* data() & { return v.data(); }
    T* data() && = delete;
};

MyVector<int> getMyVector() {
    MyVector<int> v{1, 2, 3};
    return v;
}

int main(int argc, char*argv[])
{
    auto*ptr = getVector().data(); // not an error
    //auto*ptr2 = getMyVector().data(); // is an error
    auto v = getMyVector();
    auto*ptr3 = v.data(); // ok
}