What is your evaluation of the proposal?
Is it cheating to say +∞?
Is the problem being addressed significant enough to warrant a change to Swift?
Not only is it a significant enough change for Swift, it's a significant change for my source code. I suspect a lot refactoring of if let x = x code is in my future.
Does this proposal fit well with the feel and direction of Swift?
One of the early goals of Swift was to make a language that was approachable both to developers coming from other languages and, more importantly, to beginners. I think this proposal helps with that by being more readable and an gentler introduction into optional values.
If you have used other languages or libraries with a similar feature, how do you feel that this proposal compares to those?
I have not.
How much effort did you put into your review? A glance, a quick reading, or an in-depth study?
More than a quick reading, less than in-depth study.
I've been following this work since the beginning. I think @cal has done a great job of taking that initial idea and making it concrete with both a proposal and implementation.
I'm looking forward to using this new feature.
-ch