László Stahorszki opened SPR-17484 and commented

With the release of Optional in Java 8, I think it would be appropriate for methods, like AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation() to return Optional<T>, so that we don't need additional checking parts if an annotation in this instance exists or not

Issue Links:

• Introduce null-safety of Spring Framework API [SPR-15540] #20099 Introduce null-safety of Spring Framework API