I think most agree that once you declare a pointer than the next logical step should be to point it to something. Preferably that something is a value other than null. However, there are perfectly legitimate cases for assigning a null value to a pointer , for example the implementation of a linked list where the last element points to nothing (null). These situations should be by design. If you follow the practice of assigning values to pointers as soon as you declare them than you should minimize the risk of dereferencing a null pointer. However, like anything else there is no guarantee. Thus I recommend some type of centralized error handling scheme that would gracefully handle this exception as opposed to Null pointer checks prior to using the pointer.