I think it's important to mention that Scala was created by Martin Odersky, author of the Java 1.3 compiler. He wanted Java to evolve faster, so he made his own language for the JVM.

So Scala is what Odersky wished Java to be, but couldn't, either because of genuine backwards-compatibility concern or because of simple foot-dragging.

A lot of Scala features have been adopted by Java, with generics perhaps being the most important. Odersky pitched generics for 1.3, but they weren't added until Java 5.

Note that Java has `Optional<T>` and Scala has `Option[+A]`. So if you wanted to wrap everything in an optional, you could do it in either language.

Odersky didn't like the concept of checked exceptions, so Scala doesn't have them (except when inter-operating with Java).

Scala does have null, but it steers you to be more deliberate about them. That is a big help on cutting down on unexpected nulls, in my opinion, and better than wrapping everything in optionals.