> I hate hate hate the semantic confusion between the Option type and sequences Option is a Monad in Scala and could also be modeled as an Applicative Functor

> I hate hate hate the semantic confusion between the Option type and sequences Option is a Monad in Scala and could also be modeled as an Applicative Functor - which are very generic abstractions that transcend sequences. Don't let the naming scare you, you can view them as design patterns, it just so happens that people aren't familiar with them. In Scala mapping, filtering and flatMap-ing are generic and for example Scala's for-comprehensions work on all things implementing map, filter and flatMap including things that are not sequences and for good reason. And most importantly - `Option` would be completely useless without mapping, filtering or flatMap-ing on it. Because often you have to combine multiple options and what happens in practice, without an easy to use API, people would just do "Option.get" and trade a null pointer exception for a NoSuchElementException, which would defeat the purpose of using Option. The semantic confusion between an Option and a sequence is the same confusion between a sequence and a Set - none and if there is, then you need to go back to the basics. First of all, because Option really is a collection of zero or one elements and second because all of them are Monads. > I imagine that the same dynamic will play out with Scala, which I tend to analogize as Java++ I don't know what makes people say things like this. Scala is nothing like Java and I worked with C++ and with Perl too, in production. Scala has some warts in it, but such comparisons are unwarranted.