On https://www.hackingwithswift.com/quick-start/swiftui/how-to-store-views-as-properties Can anyone explain why does adding a modifier like .padding(10) break it? thanks! (And how can i make this work to accomplish my goal?)

This is fine: let title = Text("Paul Hudson") .bold()

But this breaks: let title = Text("Paul Hudson") .bold() .padding(10)

I think it's because the return types of the two functions are different.

bold() returns a Text type.

padding() returns the opaque some View. The type is no longer known and Swift cannot infer it. You can therefore not assign it to a constant.

These are two solutions to your problem:

let title: some View = Text("Paul Hudson").bold().padding(10)

struct ContentView: View {
    let title = Text("Paul Hudson")
                     .bold()
    let subtitle = Text("Author")
                    .foregroundColor(.secondary)

    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            title
                .foregroundColor(.red)
                .padding(10)
            subtitle
        }
    }
}

These answers might help you: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66333477/how-can-i-assign-value-of-some-view-to-type-view-in-swiftui

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73015537/swiftui-why-cant-i-make-a-stored-property-a-view-with-a-modifier