>>A date is one of the most common places for null.
>>
>>Rather than phony up a date and/or add another field to indicate that you have a valid date, leave it null to indicate it is not available.
>
>That works and probably half of the developers use that route. But, in the code, they then have to take care of it. Because, working with null causes errors, if use as is. Based on the backend, when I create a record, the proper empty date values will be put. VFP has a blank date value, SQL Server has this funny 1899 empty value meaning and such.

As Janis points out, nulls in and of themselves do not cause errors. Not handling them properly causes errors.