Welcome! In this lesson, we'll focus on the basics of defining functions in Swift. You may have touched on different aspects of functions before, but here we'll bring it all together to give you a solid foundation. Functions are essential for organizing your code and making it more readable and maintainable. They allow you to encapsulate tasks and reuse code efficiently.

In this section, we'll cover how to define a simple function in Swift and how to call that function. First, we'll start by creating a basic function that prints a message. Let's take a look at an example:

Swift
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1// Function to start a mission
2func startMission() {
3    print("Mission started.")
4}
5
6// Calling the function
7startMission()

Here, the startMission function prints "Mission started." When we call this function, it executes the code inside the function.

Learning to define functions is crucial because it helps you break down complex problems into smaller, manageable pieces. This makes your code cleaner and more understandable. Functions enable you to avoid repetition by writing code once and reusing it whenever needed. Additionally, they help in isolating and fixing bugs more efficiently. Understanding functions is a stepping stone to mastering more advanced programming concepts and will greatly enhance your coding skills.

Excited to get started? Let's move on to the practice section and begin defining functions in Swift!