In other languages like (objective-c for example) calling a method on a nil object fails silently and returns nil but in ruby you get errors like this...

```
undefined method `some_method' for nil:NilClass

```

which (for me) results in code like this:

```
if some_object && some_object.cool?  # instead of if some_object.cool?
  # do some cool stuff
end

```

or

```
some_object.do_awsome_thing if some_object

```

Which all seems backwards and weird.

Two questions
-------------

1. What am I doing wrong, what's the correct way to deal with having the possibility of a nil object
2. What kinds of awful awful things would happen if I just monkey patched the nil object to return nil for missing\_methods?

IE:

```
class NilClass
  def missing_method
    nil
  end
end

```