How is option different from proper nullability in the type system? In every case I've seen an option type be used, it was always a less efficient way of approximating how Kotlin does it.

Kotlin has deconstruction:

    val (a,b,c) = myDataObject

Their documentation did indeed commit this sin when I first started using Kotlin last year. It's been cleaned up considerably and this is no longer an issue (except, I think, for the mysterious modules which appear to be an IDE specific concept).