Replying to your lower comment (the coffee has kicked in):
The situation you describe is one where a null really is an unrecoverable error, and the program should terminate. That is the one case where it makes sense to just let a NPE happen.
However, the vast majority of time, a null is just an absence of value, and does not signify an unrecoverable error. Those are the kind of situations that an Option/Maybe helps with, since it doesn't let you forget to handle the null case.
Even if a null value returned from a function is abnormal, and the program shouldn't continue, an Option is still going to be better most of the time. After all, you probably have connections and stuff you want to cleanly terminate before shutting the program down.
The situation you describe is one where a null really is an unrecoverable error, and the program should terminate. That is the one case where it makes sense to just let a NPE happen.
However, the vast majority of time, a null is just an absence of value, and does not signify an unrecoverable error. Those are the kind of situations that an Option/Maybe helps with, since it doesn't let you forget to handle the null case.
Even if a null value returned from a function is abnormal, and the program shouldn't continue, an Option is still going to be better most of the time. After all, you probably have connections and stuff you want to cleanly terminate before shutting the program down.