imo it seemed like there was this phase of "if we pretend null doesn't exist maybe it will go away" that resulted in a bunch of design issues. Beyond Optional,

imo it seemed like there was this phase of "if we pretend null doesn't exist maybe it will go away" that resulted in a bunch of design issues. Beyond Optional, the other big one to me is Map.compute/Map.merge, which subtly breaks the previous interface contract for Map. As annoying as null is, I'd rather have null than have broken apis.