> Again, the penalty (verbose missing values ie. Optional<>) was adopted, and the reward (confidently-present values) was not.

Ah, the joys of having a Scala `Option` type and still having to consider the cases or Some[thing], Nothing and... null!

Yes, well-written Scala code knows not to use null with reckless abandon, but since when your coworkers coming from Java know to show restraint?