On my fishy scale, requiring translation between different data models would by pretty high up. And how would it help anyways? Absence can be a perfectly valid

On my fishy scale, requiring translation between different data models would by pretty high up. And how would it help anyways? Absence can be a perfectly valid state and alternative representations of absence like scala's Option seem pointlessly ceremonous once you've worked with a syntax that does not completely suck at dealing with null.