Proper use of Optional

Using Optional is hard in the beginning.

Especially for first-timers one has a tendency to use the wrong methods.

Take the following sequence of refactoring for example:

First without any kind of Optional:

A first bad attempt at an optional:

It looks like the person just... kind of removed the Optional back to a situation that he knew and was more familiar with.

Let's try this again:

Now this is a good try. It is very common to see the two Optional class methods being used together. isPresent() and get().

But we can do better.

It's often the same: we wish to do something, only when there's a value available.

Like so:

Of course, it's sometimes better to create a method reference:

But I do find this proliferates the number of methods, but it's an acceptable side effect.

We finally arrive at something concise and easy to read, once you get the hang of it.