func foo(maybeInt Optional<int>) { switch maybeInt { case None: panic("not so optional!!!!!") ... } } This function w

func foo(maybeInt Optional<int>) { switch maybeInt { case None: panic("not so optional!!!!!") ... } } This function would never take an Optional in real life if it's just going to crash on None so I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The benefit of using Optional/Maybe is that you're encoding at the type level whether it makes sense for a given variable to be able to be nothing, and if it does make sense, the compiler makes sure you check whether it's nothing or not, but this is an example of where that doesn't make sense so the type should just be int instead of Optional<int>.