Apple has released Swift Playgrounds 4. Playgrounds is an app for iPad and Mac designed to help people learn to code and build iOS apps using Swift, Apple's language that was originally developed as an alternative language to Objective C.

Swift's designers aim is to provide a single language including the best ideas from languages such as C# and JavaScript, while being easy to use. Swift Playground provides lessons and walkthroughs that demonstrate the core concepts of coding and building apps as users write Swift code in an interactive environment. The term playgrounds refers to the mini programs that users work with to learn the basics of programming.

Swift Playgrounds includes interactive lessons that use puzzles and experimentation to teach core coding concepts including commands,
loops, operators, functions, conditional statements and parameters.

Once a user has learned the basics, there are additional starting points that can be used to create playgrounds from scratch. Apple says:

"With access to thousands of APIs in the iOS and macOS SDKs, you can create amazing playgrounds that explore the web, generate 3D worlds, experiment with physics, and much more."

The updated version of the app provides the tools to build iPhone and iPad apps  on an iPad and submit them directly to App Store Connect, providing a new way for developers to create apps. Code is immediately reflected in the live preview as you build apps, and you can run your apps full screen to test them out.

There's also a new open project format based on Swift packages that can be opened and edited in Swift Playgrounds for iPad, as well as within Xcode on Mac, which Apple says offers even more versatility to develop apps across iPad and Mac.

More Information

Swift Playgrounds

Related Articles

Swift 5.5 Adds Concurrency Support

Swift 5.2 Improves Performance

Apple Launches Swift Playgrounds

To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin.

Comments

Make a Comment or View Existing Comments Using Disqus

or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info