‘Fake error’ about immutable values when using popFirst() on Array

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It’s been a while since I wrote any meaningful Swift.  How I didn’t miss the Swift compiler’s bullshit error messages.

var someArray = ["Foo", "Bar"]

if let foo = someArray.popFirst() {
    print("Who cares, we never get here anyway.")
}

That yields, on the popFirst() method:

Cannot use mutating member on immutable value: 'someArray' is immutable.

No it’s not.  It’s simply not.

For whatever reason, if you instead call popFirst() on ArraySlice – ostensibly indistinguishable from a real Array – it works just fine.

var someArray = ["Foo", "Bar"][0...]

if let foo = someArray.popFirst() {
    print("Yet this works correctly.")
}

Sigh.

I presume it’s trying to tell me something stupidly obscure about Swift’s byzantine type system.  Good luck finding out what.  Good luck even finding the definition of the popFirst() method, since Xcode claims it doesn’t exist if you Command-Control-click on it.  But Xcode can’t find most things, so that in itself says very little.

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