If that happens, there would be language level nullability types that may supersede Optional if they indeed end up solving a strictly more general problem. It's

If that happens, there would be language level nullability types that may supersede Optional if they indeed end up solving a strictly more general problem. It's not unheard of to have more general solutions supersede older, more specific ones. For example, the newly added pattern-matching features largely obviate the need for visitors, which are a pretty common pattern in libraries; or virtual threads, which largely obviate the need for many asynchronous APIs (and there are opposite examples, such as j.u.c locks, which followed the language's locks). That's the nature of evolution: sometimes there are surviving vestiges of the past.