String considered harmfull

Classic imperative languages like Java and C# keep adopting concepts and ideas from functional languages. We now have the tools to more precisely express our intentions when designing our types. Still the primitive String type is used and overused all over the place instead of a more precise custom type. Is a Norwegian national identity number a String? Is an Integer better? Is it overengineering to create a custom type for it? The answer is probably “It depends”, but in this talk we’ll take a look at some of the things you should take into consideration.