title: Why is Spring Data still using null references as return values?
body: <p>This is more a suggestion for improvement than a question.</p>
  
  <p>We all know about Tony Hoare's "billion dollar mistake" by inventing the null reference. Google advices in the wiki of the <a href="https://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/" rel="noreferrer">guava library</a> to <a href="https://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/wiki/UsingAndAvoidingNullExplained" rel="noreferrer">avoid using null</a>.</p>
  
  <p>I really appreciate the Spring Data project and we use Spring Data MongoDB in many projects. Is there a chance that you will replace all possible null reference return values by an <code>Optional&lt;T&gt;</code>? I think this would be a big improvement when using the Spring Data repositories abstraction.</p>
  
  <p>I know that a lot of the interfaces would have to be changed, but the code changes are almost trivial, just wrap the return type in an <code>Optional.of(returnValue)</code>.</p>