I'm not speaking to whether or not you consider optionals useful. Rather, I'm saying that calling a method that can return null without dealing with that case i

I'm not speaking to whether or not you consider optionals useful. Rather, I'm saying that calling a method that can return null without dealing with that case in the code is one of the most common reasons for a NPE. The calling code _is_ the actual error, and forcing the use of optionals removes the possibility of them.