However, that's a new way to check for null in the language, where what we need is to recognize the ways people are already checking for null in billions of lines of code. Therefore, the priority is to do a good flow analysis that will just understand when a nullable variable can be assumed to not be null (e.g. after a check, a non-null assignment, etc.), and then let you dereference without challenge.

Another Swift feature that I think leads to very poor readability is trailing closures.