Comment by driggs

It's so sad that Java 8 had the chance to really fix the null problem, but gave us only the half-assed `java.util.Optional<T>`. Rather than implementing optional values at the language level, it's just another class tossed into the JRE.

This is perfectly legal code, where the optional wrapper itself is null:

    Optional<String> getMiddleName() {
        return null;
    }