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.
