It's semantically similar but not syntactic sugar, since it is not translated to Optional or wrapper types, so it also doesn't incur the overhead of Optional.

It's semantically similar but not syntactic sugar, since it is not translated to Optional or wrapper types, so it also doesn't incur the overhead of Optional. I actually like the language support more, as it flows a lot better than the (flat)map chain you get in monadic style. Similar to async/await v.s. Future.