> anything that adds a branch to check dereference in release builds is an instant no-go ...which, as shown by Rust, is actually not true, and is very much a g

> anything that adds a branch to check dereference in release builds is an instant no-go ...which, as shown by Rust, is actually not true, and is very much a go in the vast majority of cases. > what do you propose to do instead? It's easier and more natural to access the optional in an unsafe way (through the -> operator) than access it in the safe way (through `value()`); this is a wrong default which should have been made the other way around. Potentially unsafe behavior should be opt-in, instead of opt-out. Yes, it's important that you have the option to disable this check for performance-sensitive code. But the majority of the code is not performance-sensitive to this degree that an extra branch is going to make any difference whatsoever.