[spoiler]

I think the phrasing of "explicitly memory-unsafe" is wrong[1] in letter, but true in spirit. At the end of the day `std::optional<T>` is only marginally better than `T*`. And I'm sometimes not even sure if it's better or worse; the extra API surface you describe is nice, but in practice it's just a mirage of safety, since its API subset includes that of a common pointer. And I've seen ample code use the unsafe API because (convenience/performance/inexperience).

But at the end of the day, I guess my comment is also irrelevant, because we as developers should strive for correctness, not brevity, in code. If we can achieve both, the better. But alas, brevity and correctness are in an antagonistic tension in C++. So when we want correctness in C++, we should also be prepared to swallow a large portion of spaghetti Bolognese.

[1]: Or at least no more melodramatic than the phrase "aggressively wrong" lol

[kllrnohj]

> At the end of the day `std::optional<T>` is only marginally better than `T*`.

It's dramatically better than `T*` if your data isn't a pointer in the first place.