There is a function that does what you are asking for.

.unarap_or()

It either unwraps the value or uses a provided default. Personally, i think unwrap() should be renamed unwrap_or_panic() to follow existing conventions and prevent confusion for non-rust programmers.

"unwrap should not exist" is true as long as you don't want to ever use the language. If you actually want to use it, you need it. At least while developing.

Some values cannot have a default value. And some cases it's preferable to panic even if it has a default value.

unwrap is not the problem. Cloudflare's usage is.

There are good reasons to have unwrap or at least expect. There is no reason to use it in the case that Cloudflare used it in.

I feel like I’ve seen an insane number of error messages in various apps and websites around the unwrap method.

I suspect this is related to LLM usage somehow. We'll probably see a lot more of this type of problem (sudden flareups of a particular bad code implementation)