Today I came across a very elegant use (IMHO) of Optional at work.
Consider the same person as above with a date of birth attribute:

public class Person {
   private String name;
   private String dob;

   // getters & setters etc etc (yep Java is verbose !!!!)
}

Now say you want to get that dob value into a Date object and do weird and wonderful date calculations.
You could use Optional like this:

// if you expect dob to be a string in the format yyyy-mm-dd
LocalDate birthday = Optional.ofNullable(persone.getDob())
    .map(LocalDate::parse)
    .orElse(null);  // or whatever

// or if the dob is in a different format, for example dd-MM-yyyy
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("dd-MM-yyyy");
LocalDate  d = Optional.ofNullable(p.getDob())
                .map(dob -> LocalDate.parse(dob, formatter))
                .orElse(null);

Now you have a LocalDate instance to play with.

In fact, once you have an Optional instance you have the following stream operators available

• map
• flatMap
• filter

flatMap can be used to compose Optionals

public int ageDifference(Optional<Person> older, Optional<Person> younger) {
     return older.flatMap(o -> younger.map(y -> calAgeDifference(o.getDob(), y.getDob())); 
}

Quite cool

Just thought I’d share

cheers @AstonJ -
it’s actually good practice for me to help reinforce the learning by posting. Although at my age I will have forgotten it by end of week.
… so what were we talking about again … ?

I am just as bad - though I think a modern world is partly to blame - we are bombarded with information almost constantly now, imagine living a few thousand years ago before TV/Radio/Computers/Internet. Probably would have been quite serene and peaceful

Funny thing is I read that article… and forgot most of it