IMO, that’s not the same as not having optionals at all, and writing unconditional blocks left and right that may or may not operate on undefined values. It super easy to just dereference any pointer you got back from some function call in C++, without paying attention. Optionals force you to either skip the blocks, or think about how to write them to handle undefineds. Also, it’s ‘code as documentation’ in some sense, which I’m a big proponent of.
"Deliberately unwrap the optional" is the exact same thing as "deliberately unwrap the pointer", you just deref' it and it's UB if the optional / pointer is empty.
C++'s std::optional is not a safety feature (it's no safer than using a unique_ptr or raw pointer), it's an optimisation device: if you put a value in an std::optional you don't have to heap allocate it.
> It super easy to just dereference any pointer you got back from some function call in C++, without paying attention.
And optionals work the exact same way. There's no difference, they don't warn you and they don't require using a specific API like `value_unchecked()`. You just deref' the optional to get the internal value, with the same effects as doing so on any other pointer.
