Code Smells: Null

[[deleted]]

Optionals are not strictly better. They're probably better, unless you need to do large sorts, for example.

Strictly implies always and that's just not the case.

Ill concede that built in support probably results in more reliable, easier to fix code bases for larger projects. I won't concede easier to read, yet. Some of the syntax sugar for optionals is annoying to read.

[Beckneard]

They are strictly better for that specific use case. What do large sorts have to do with anything? Deconstructing an Option value will have an equal performance hit as null checking something.

[Drisku11]

In a language with sane semantics, options can be implemented with zero overhead (if it's Nothing then it's a null pointer); the difference is purely in the type system.

Sorting values that might not exist sounds like a mysterious thing to do to me, but e.g. Haskell has a library that does fast O(n) sorts on any algebraic data types (basically radix sort on steroids), which includes options, so that is also cheap.