An optional is the compiler telling me to check for nulls. My program won't compile if I don't check for nulls.

IDE support is half baked, someone can always turn it off.

This doesn't sound right. Could you paste an example of a misuse of optional (for example: an unchecked unwrap) causing a compilation failure instead of a panic?

In Swift `let x = things.first` won't compile but `let x = things.first ?? "empty"` and `let x = things.first!` will. Does that count?

(Probably mangled the Swift, doing this from memory)

My swift isn't good, but since you didn't specify a type for x, I think it should compile anyway. But if things is an empty array of T, first may return nil and x will be of type T?. If things is an array of optional, x will be of type T??