
Swift Playgrounds – Learn to code on your iPad - fred256
http://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/
======
gavinpc
Will 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?

~~~
madeofpalk
For what it's worth, this is a problem they (said) they addressed in latest
Xcode. We'll see how that turns out in practice I guess.

~~~
feelix
I have a large complex project in XCode. (It's this: [http://macdaddy.io/mac-
backup-software](http://macdaddy.io/mac-backup-software))

It looks simple but it's actually about 6 different programs all stuck
together.

Codesigning breaks on it periodically, and it takes days to fix.

XCode 8 has just broken this worse than any other XCode version in history. It
seems to have done so by trying to automate all its requirements. So now it
outputs broken bundles when I compile it. This has taken me all of today, and
I'll be surprised if I have it working within the next 6 hours of work.

This is a fairly typical experience of using XCode for me. Many times getting
codesigning working correctly and getting it working within the mac app store
parameters takes more time than writing the code.

In short: Using XCode is harder than programming.

~~~
tempodox
You can never, ever, just upgrade Xcode (or anything important, really) on a
production Mac. Xcode, especially, needs to be installed on a sandbox machine
first where it can destroy anything it wants. It's an effort, but still better
than having production explode in your face.

~~~
feelix
That's probably a good approach. Still, when my certificates expire (which
makes the provisioning profiles invalid), that alone will take hours or days
to fix. So even if it's left in a completely untouched environment
certificates expire after a year or two and I cannot recompile the project
without a lot of work.

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sridca
For 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/...](https://itunes.apple.com/in/book/app-development-with-
swift/id1118575552?mt=11)

Here is a report of someone using that book to get started,
[https://hackernoon.com/i-develop-therefore-i-
am-b501e2a10277...](https://hackernoon.com/i-develop-therefore-i-
am-b501e2a10277#.9sjkahx0l)

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euske
Does 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
VoiceOver: yes, as reported in this article:
[http://mashable.com/2016/07/10/apple-innovation-blind-
engine...](http://mashable.com/2016/07/10/apple-innovation-blind-engineer/)

> [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.

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sjwright
Does anyone know if Playgrounds for iPad is compiling code with LLVM behind
the scenes or if they have written an interpreter?

~~~
stepanhruda
compiling as usual. You have access to everything on iPad, it's acutally very
powerful even for developers.

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gavi
I am surprised it was not included with iOS 10 and had to be downloaded
separately. It was part of it until beta 8

~~~
heironimus
It would easily be as popular as the Stocks app and the U2 album.

~~~
razvanh
which you can finally delete:)

~~~
ihuman
You're not really deleting it. You are just removing it from your home screen.

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jlebrech
I 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.

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gfody
This 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

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wslh
Just curious, why does it need iOS 10?

~~~
k_sze
How 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.

~~~
JeremyBanks
Even 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.

~~~
k_sze
That's a sensible argument. I can neither agree nor rebute until I get to play
with Swift Playground. I can borrow my mom's shinier iPad Air when I see her.
It'll all depend on how Swift Playground plays and feels. For example, there
are some questions that will help me decide whether I'm being too cynical:
will Swift Playground be only suitable for teaching kids or will it be good
for advanced adult programmers coming from other programming languages as
well? How much of Apple-specific API will it introduce, if at all?

~~~
menckenjr
I've been using Swift Playgrounds on my iPad Air since the second iOS10 beta.
It's been really stable, plays well with my bluetooth keyboard and the error
feedback on it is excellent. My wish list for the next version would include
(a) the ability to create and edit files in *.playground/Sources and (b) a
project navigator view to let me move assets around the folders inside a
Playground or Playground Book on the device. That said, it's a great tool for
education as well as prototyping.

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d08ble
ACPU 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...

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WhitneyLand
Have 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.

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eksrow
It would've been nice to see some kind of animation on the code itself during
the run, showing which commands it has completed.

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icoder
Wow, 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
I don't think your use of quotation marks adds anything.

~~~
Retr0spectrum
The same could be said for your comment. (And mine too...)

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shams93
Not 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.

~~~
shams93
However I'm holding out hope that iOS will become self hosting like Android
this is a step towards iOS xcode in the future.

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doe88
Is Swift Playgrounds' code itself open source?

~~~
ddon
unfortunately it is not open source... But they opened sourced Swift
Playground Support [http://ericasadun.com/2016/07/07/apple-open-sources-swift-
pl...](http://ericasadun.com/2016/07/07/apple-open-sources-swift-playground-
support/)

~~~
doe88
> unfortunately it is not open source

Indeed, that's a shame, what better example than open sourcing the tool used
to teach the language...

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laszlokorte
Doesn't work on iPad 4 :(

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dingo_bat
If you want to learn how to code, get a desktop with Ubuntu on it. And start
with C++.

~~~
72deluxe
And what GUI libraries would you recommend? Out of interest!

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intoverflow2
Found this whole project woefully disappointing considering Bret Victor used
to work there.

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adamnemecek
I 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.

~~~
Razengan
They 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
Also, this a free app that increases the usefulness of existing iPads already
in schools etc.

