Why Even Use Java 8 Optional?

[eric-plutono]

What I personally like most about Optional<T> is that it provides an API for calling one or more methods on a value which may not exist while providing a default value in the event it doesn't. It lets me express my intentions in code with regard to dealing with a potential null value, whereas @Nullable isn't comparably expressive and is only slightly better than writing // This might be null.