The memory layout of a pointer is quite different from a full-blown object. E.g. Optionals are only efficient in Java because the HotSpot compiler optimizes the

The memory layout of a pointer is quite different from a full-blown object. E.g. Optionals are only efficient in Java because the HotSpot compiler optimizes them at runtime. And it further obfuscates the memory layout--is it an object or not? How much memory will it use at runtime? How long does it take to become optimized? Am I paying the cost of a method call or not?