Use a Base Class or a Protocol In Swift?

One of those old questions

Photo by Dung Anh on Unsplash

Before we start

Difficulty: Beginner | Easy | Normal | Challenging

This article has been developed using Xcode 12.5, and Swift 5.

Prerequisites:

• You will be expected to be aware of how to make a Single View Application in Swift

Terminology

Base Class: A class, in an object-oriented programming language, from which other classes are derived

Class: An object that defines properties and methods in common

Protocol: A blueprint on methods, properties and requirements to suit a piece of functionality

Reference type: A pointer to a variable or object

Value types: Where a value is stored as the actual value of the item

The Project

You are designing an Instagram — like social media Application. The user is able to post audio, video or text messages to their timeline.

The Base Class Implementation

As part of this project, we have friends that are represented by the following User class: