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Swift Playgrounds – Learn to code on your iPad
- gavi 10y agoI am surprised it was not included with iOS 10 and had to be downloaded separately. It was part of it until beta 8
- threeseed 10y agoThe URL says it is still in Preview so perhaps some issue that prevented it going out with the GM. Hopefully will come as part of a later update. It is such a great opportunity for Apple.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- glhaynes 10y agoI think it'd be really cool if it were included, but it'd take up a decent chunk of storage (App Store shows 268 MB), which would be a bummer for people on 16GB iPads.
- aljones 10y agoHopefully it is because they want to update it often.
- heironimus 10y agoIt would easily be as popular as the Stocks app and the U2 album.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gavinpc 10y agoWill they include a lesson on how to make Byte set up a provisioning profile in itunesconnect and install a code signing key in your local keychain and and enter the MAC address of his tethered device into developer.apple.com and then hopefully, just maybe XCode will allow you to run what you wrote?
- elliotec 10y agoProbably not.
- GuiA 10y agoSnarky snarky! Semi warranted. But I teach swift to teenagers, and have set up hundreds of devices/machines with Xcode/etc at this point. Yes, it's still prone to random bugs, like most software, but with sideloading it's getting pretty darn close to plug in your phone, press Run, and It Just Works.
- gavinpc 10y ago> It Just Works Even if that's true, you're still locked into Apple's world—a privilege you paid for. If I'm snarky it's because calling this "revolutionary" is a slap in the face to the people who've spent their careers working to understand early education through computers, without the ulterior motive of said platform lock-in.
- bluejekyll 10y agoI cry a little every time that I realize that Apple and Microsoft have traded positions. Development tools should be open, at least we should be able to target platforms generically.
- adamnemecek 10y agoI hate iPad exclusivity. Like I get it, the content is better consumed on a bigger screen and you might be taking advantage of the better hw but maybe let me check it out and decide for myself if I'm willing to buy an iPad for the full experience.
- sudhirj 10y agoThere's really nothing stopping any of us from building a Swift Tutorial app on Android. I'm sure it's already been done, actually. But why would Apple want to do it?
- Razengan 10y agoThey wanted to make an app for introducing kids to programming. There are already plenty of tutorials on the web, to run on a computer. A web-app or iPhone app would not have had a good enough UI and they probably don't have enough Android developers to make it work well on all Android devices. Apple doesn't have unlimited people to assign to this project. They chose a platform where they can focus on providing the best experience for. Why complain?
- Razengan 10y agoAlso, this a free app that increases the usefulness of existing iPads already in schools etc.
- wslh 10y agoJust curious, why does it need iOS 10?
- k_sze 10y agoHow are they going to make you buy shiny new iPads otherwise? Edit: Why the downvote? I still have an iPad mini (1st gen), and I don't get to play with Swift Playground because iOS 10 requires iPad mini 2 or newer. Look, I'm as much an Apple fanboy as the next person: I use a MacBook Pro, I have an iPhone 6s Plus, and my wife will be getting an iPhone 7 Plus, but you can't deny that Apple, just like other companies, build arbitrary obsolescence into their products.
- stevetrewick 10y agoiOS 10 will run on the shiny iPad you already have. All the way back to the iPad 2, IIRC.
- hh2222 10y agoHope so, but Swift Playgrounds isn't compatible with iPad 2.
- stevetrewick 10y agoNo, you're right, iPad mini 2 appears to be the hardware floor for Playgrounds - I can never keep the iPad SKUs straight. IIRC (and I may not, see above) that the 2 was the last 32 bit big shiny rectangle. But the point is there are multiple generations of existing devices that will run Swift Playgrounds.
- JeremyBanks 10y agoEven if you want to be cynical, the far more important strategic value in this is in developing more developers for their platform long-term. They wouldn't compromise that for the purpose of marginally more device sales.
- gfody 10y agoThis looks so similar to Lightbot that I wonder if it's the same game just with updated graphics and characters and stuff.. and of course all the swift code
- shams93 10y agoNot as exciting as AIDE I have 2 apps on Google play with over 20 thousand users both of them built in AIDE with a combination of Java and C++ right on my android device.
- euske 10y agoDoes this support VoiceOver and some sort of Sound API? I occasionally teach blind kids programming. Sometimes it takes an hour to just navigate them through an unfamiliar setup with a screen reader. If this can be used by a blind person, it could be a game changer.
- krilnon 10y agoVoiceOver: yes, as reported in this article: http://mashable.com/2016/07/10/apple-innovation-blind-engineer/ http://mashable.com/2016/07/10/apple-innovation-blind-engine... > [Jordyn Castor] was a driving force behind accessibility on Apple's soon-to-be released Swift Playgrounds, an intro-to-coding program geared toward children. She's been working to make the program accessible to blind children, who have been waiting a long time for the tool, she says.
- sjwright 10y agoDoes anyone know if Playgrounds for iPad is compiling code with LLVM behind the scenes or if they have written an interpreter?
- _frog 10y agoI'm pretty sure they said it was running LLVM at some point
- stepanhruda 10y agocompiling as usual. You have access to everything on iPad, it's acutally very powerful even for developers.
- doe88 10y agoIs Swift Playgrounds' code itself open source?
- ddon 10y agounfortunately it is not open source... But they opened sourced Swift Playground Support http://ericasadun.com/2016/07/07/apple-open-sources-swift-playground-support/ http://ericasadun.com/2016/07/07/apple-open-sources-swift-pl...
- doe88 10y ago> unfortunately it is not open source Indeed, that's a shame, what better example than open sourcing the tool used to teach the language...
- sridca 10y agoFor anyone looking to get started on iOS programming Apple has released a free interactive iBooks book called "App Development with Swift" https://itunes.apple.com/in/book/app-development-with-swift/id1118575552?mt=11 https://itunes.apple.com/in/book/app-development-with-swift/... Here is a report of someone using that book to get started, https://hackernoon.com/i-develop-therefore-i-am-b501e2a10277#.9sjkahx0l https://hackernoon.com/i-develop-therefore-i-am-b501e2a10277...
- icoder 10y agoWow, this looks cool and very complete, the must have put quite some effort in this. I've been 'stuck' on Objective-C for a while now, knowing I should 'keep up' and learn Swift. This could be a nice, fun way to pick up Swift in my 'spare' time.
- always_good 10y agoI don't think your use of quotation marks adds anything.
- Retr0spectrum 10y agoThe same could be said for your comment. (And mine too...)
- eksrow 10y agoIt would've been nice to see some kind of animation on the code itself during the run, showing which commands it has completed.
- jlebrech 10y agoI want a language + ide + (hosting/compiler) combo that's as easy to use as BASIC was back in the day. and scales all the way up from kids' apps to enterprise.
- intoverflow2 10y agoFound this whole project woefully disappointing considering Bret Victor used to work there.
- laszlokorte 10y agoDoesn't work on iPad 4 :(
- WhitneyLand 10y agoHave any of these kid targeted development products ever been highly successful? I've seen dozens of attempts but they all seem to fizzle pretty quickly.
- d08ble 10y agoACPU Studio is powerful development platform on mobiles with Livecoding. True IDE, built near to Bret Victor & Eve principles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAcv12eBqcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAcv12eBqcc Another sample: use Xcode on iPad for publish to AppStore remotely. http://acpul.tumblr.com/image/116464494150 http://acpul.tumblr.com/image/116464494150 Coming soon...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dingo_bat 10y agoIf you want to learn how to code, get a desktop with Ubuntu on it. And start with C++.
- 72deluxe 10y agoAnd what GUI libraries would you recommend? Out of interest!