Optional acts as a container object that may or may not contain a non-null value. It is introduced in Java 8 to help avoid
NullPointerException. It provides methods to check if a value is present and retrieve the value if it is present.
Optional is used instead of null values to make the code more readable and avoid potential errors.
It is a bad practice to use null with Optional because it is unclear whether a value is present or not, leading to
confusion and potential NullPointerException errors.
