Truthfully I think the language lost something critically important when we went gung-ho on purging ourselves of the EVILS! of nullable types.

Back in the Paleolithic, the only way to get a nullable value type was to extremely explicitly box it into a Nullable<T>. The distinction between value and reference types was crystal clear and unmistakable. Boxing values required an active and deliberate decision.

Now I guess we just box everything because null checks are hard or something.