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SWIFT / Swift Playground App

I installed the iOS 10 Beta on my iPad today and just like mentioned at WWDC 2016, with iOS 10 we now have a NEW app called "Swift Playground" that allows users to start digging into programming in Apple Swift language.

When I first saw the presentation about "Swift Playground app for iOS 10", I was totally mind blown. That is exactly what I have been asking for many years. A good coding app on iPad.

Well, actually we are already able to do some coding on iPad and iPhone using 3rd party apps like Pythonista and Procoding (Processing, Python, etc). But now, we finally got the Apple official coding app built in for iPad.

The app is using Swift iOS programming language, and Swift is a kind of nice blend of Python, Lua, and few other high level programming languages.

Heard that many programmers are liking Swift, which is a good sign!

FIRST TEST SWIFT PLAYGROUND

Swift Playground app comes with some tutorials and I guess anyone will definitely start from here. Step by step beginner tutorial is always good fun.

Each tutorial needs to be downloaded before it can be loaded. So give it some time to load the program from the net and once it is completed, you are good to go.

The first coding tutorial for Swift is really colorful with cute character we can control using code. The tutorial will feel slow for intermediate programmer, but anyhow, it is worth checking.

It starts from the very basic of running premade functions (COMMANDS) to move and orient a character on screen in it's environment. Then it goes into creating custom function.

func () {

}

Then goes into concept of LOOP in Swift and so on, each with example puzzle to solve.

for i in 1...4 {

}

Experience programmers can certainly go through each puzzle real quick, but what is fun is to actually make mistake and try things or variety of solutions. By doing so, you will learn the Swift syntax.

It comes to my surprise that the provided puzzle and examples goes pretty far and working out our logic. Even though basics, it will start to get into more interesting areas. Apple has made one really good programming tutorial available on every iPad running iOS 10 and this is fantastic!

FURTHER ON...

As you go along the Swift Tutorial App, you will discover that soon you started to think all kind of programming logic, even using few simple tools such as:
  • Functions
  • For Loops
  • Conditional If, If Else, Else
  • NOT, OR, and AND operators
  • While Loops

The last few levels will give more challenge. Beginner and experience programmers could find joy in going through this example for sure.

This is only the beginning, but I think I started to like Swift, thanks to the Playground app!


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