Why should Java 8’s Optional not be used in arguments

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Oh, those coding styles are to be taken with a bit of salt.

  1. (+) Passing an Optional result to another method, without any semantic analysis; leaving that to the method, is quite alright.
  2. (-) Using Optional parameters causing conditional logic inside the methods is literally contra-productive.
  3. (-) Needing to pack an argument in an Optional, is suboptimal for the compiler, and does an unnecessary wrapping.
  4. (-) In comparison to nullable parameters Optional is more costly.
  5. (-) The risk of someone passing the Optional as null in actual parameters.

In general: Optional unifies two states, which have to be unraveled. Hence better suited for result than input, for the complexity of the data flow.

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