The article is missing the similarities between Swift Optionals and Kotlin Nullables.

Swift code:

  var name: String?

  name? ///returns a safe value
  name! ///returns an unsafe value and throws an exception in case of a nil value

  if name != nil {
   ///Now we can use name! forcing unwrap because we know it's not nil
  }

  if let unwrapedName = name {
   /// Here we can use unwrapedName without forcing the unwrap
  }

The null checks are almost the same in Kotlin: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/null-safety.html