Checked exceptions

[Brian Goetz]

> The example that comes to mind is Double#parseDouble.  It's annoying to have to deal with NumberFormatException, the API would jive better if instead it returned an Optional<Double>.  But I realize that isn't possible without a lot of breakage, so what about instead a optionalParseDouble that returns a Optional<Double>?
>

Stepping back from the exceptions question for a minute, the way I would 
prefer to address problems like this is via pattern matching. If we 
expose a pattern whose target is a string, and which produces a binding 
variable of type double if the string is the string representation of a 
double, then either the pattern matches and produces a valid double, or 
it doesn't match.  The advantage of this over the Optional approach is 
that is nestable with other patterns, so if we have a pattern that 
produces a String, we can compose it (via nesting) with the 
double-parsing pattern.

Once we have pattern matching, it will make sense to expose all sorts of 
parsing patterns, which work similarly to the Optional-bearing version 
of your method, but compose better.