[bunderbunder]

TBH, I'm happy with that being a breaking change, too. Just keep returning a T? that happens to always have a value until the next major version # increment (or whatever), and then make the breaking change, and then I get a clear signal that I can delete some lines of code.

The alternative seems like a path that, in any decently complex software project, ultimately leads to an accumulation of useless cruft that'll probably continue to grow over time as people keep copy/pasting code that contained the now-useless null-handling logic.