DAY 12
Optionals
Null references – literally when a variable has no value – were invented by Tony Hoare way back in 1965. When asked about it in retrospect, he said “I call it my billion-dollar mistake” because they lead to so many problems.
This is the last day that you’ll be learning the fundamentals of Swift, and it’s devoted exclusively to Swift’s solution to null references, known as optionals. These are a really important language feature, but they can hurt your brain a little – don’t feel bad if you need to repeat some videos a few times.
In essence, an optional is trying to answer the question “what if our variable doesn’t have a value?” Swift wants to make sure all our programs are as safe as possible, so it has some very specific – and very important! – techniques for handling this eventuality.
Today you have 11 one-minute videos to watch, and you’ll meet unwrapping, optional chaining, typecasting, and more. Once you’ve watched each video and completed any optional extra reading you wanted, there’s a short test to help make sure you’ve understood what was taught.
- Handling missing data
- Optional: Why does Swift have optionals?
- Test: Handling missing data
- Unwrapping optionals
- Optional: Why does Swift make us unwrap optionals?
- Test: Unwrapping optionals
- Unwrapping with guard
- Optional: When to use guard let rather than if let
- Test: Unwrapping with guard
- Force unwrapping
- Optional: When should you force unwrap optionals in Swift?
- Test: Force unwrapping
- Implicitly unwrapped optionals
- Nil coalescing
- Optional: When should you use nil coalescing in Swift?
- Test: Nil coalescing
- Optional chaining
- Optional: Why is optional chaining so important?
- Test: Optional chaining
- Optional try
- Optional: When should you use optional try?
- Test: Optional try
- Failable initializers
- Optional: Why would you want a failable initializer?
- Test: Failable initializers
- Typecasting
- Optional: When is type casting useful in Swift?
- Test: Typecasting
- Optionals summary
- Test: Optionals
Have some questions about optionals?
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