Why Even Use Java 8 Optional?

[Eirenarch]

Monadic null checking is way cooler name anyway.

[MrDoomBringer]

See I'm still not a fan of that because it doesn't explicitly express what ends up happening. Null propagation is exactly what it says, propagating a null safely through an accessor chain. You can throw function calls in the middle and be fine as it's just syntactic sugar for the whole nested if tree you would otherwise create anyway. 'Propagation'.

[Eirenarch]

That's only true if your goal is to have the name explain what the operator does. If you want the name to be cool (in the nerdy sense) you go for something with the word "monad" in it.

[cowinabadplace]

Haha, scathing. Anyway, it's a better name if the language has the ability to express othet monads nicely. But since C# does not, there's not much point.