[HN Gopher] Swift Playgrounds for macOS
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Swift Playgrounds for macOS
Author : rock_artist
Score : 237 points
Date : 2020-02-11 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apps.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apps.apple.com)
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I visited Apple store to get wife an Apple watch ( I tried to
| dissauade her, but it was what she wants ) and played with the
| Playground toys.
|
| Neither my brother's nor my cousin's kids are ready age-wise, but
| it seemed like a ton of fun. I would love to be a kid today.
| m0zg wrote:
| They'd probably be watching YouTube nonstop, like all the rest
| of the kids though. There are downsides to being a kid today,
| ones that kids don't even realize are downsides.
| [deleted]
| jedieaston wrote:
| Now, Apple, can we please have the opposite? XCode on the iPad
| (even if some features had to be removed, like VS Code is to VS),
| with a containerized shell to run code we write in?
|
| Please?
| nickhalfasleep wrote:
| The day they provide this, is the day they are clearly
| signalling the end of macos.
| month13 wrote:
| Doubtful, there's still a wide difference between MacOS and
| iPadOS, if anything they've diverged more in recent years.
| The multitasking workflow on iPadOS is flux, and has
| complexity issues.
| MR4D wrote:
| I would argue that a phone, tablet, and computer can all have
| the same OS, just with different UI.
|
| So the "end of macos" is unlikely in my book.
| dmitriid wrote:
| The problem is that the "just" is an unsolvable problem.
|
| Your phone and to some extent tablet are limited screen
| estate with the finger as the primary method of
| interaction.
|
| Your desktop is nearly unlimited screen estate with high
| precision input methods (mouse and keyboard).
|
| The "just different UIs" mean "entirely different UIs
| tailored to specific interactions and completely changing
| behaviour of an app in all but the simplest cases"
| jdminhbg wrote:
| All of this is true, but with processing power and disk
| space increasing, you could envision a world where a
| phone simply has a copy of a desktop OS that it could
| boot into for docking, like a Mac with a Windows
| partition.
|
| I'm sure you could do this with Linux now, it's just such
| a niche use case nobody has mass produced it.
| MR4D wrote:
| If MSFT can make Excel run on my iPhone, then I have a
| lot of hope.
|
| When I can edit a freaking PowerPoint presentation on an
| iPhone (in a pinch - I wouldn't want to do it all day),
| then I have to think it's not only possible, but already
| done.
|
| Email is probably the best example. Every major email app
| is on multiple platforms, and I'd be very surprised if
| most of the code is not already the same among platforms
| _except_ for the UI.
|
| So I'd submit that it is a __solved __problem.
| dizzy3gg wrote:
| Microsoft seem to be heavily invested in react native
| (and possibly election?) as their UI layer.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I believe you misunderstood. The issue is not whether
| software can be ported to a touch platform. It is that
| keyboard/mouse-oriented UI and ergonomics and a touch-
| oriented UI and ergonomics cannot successfully co-exist.
| It's not a programming challenge.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why?
|
| iOS is still much lighter weight than MacOS, uses less
| memory, doesn't have swap, optimized for battery use, and
| optimized more for security than flexibility.
| sharatvir wrote:
| I'm waiting for the day we can "dock" a phone to a monitor
| with a mouse/kb & have a full desktop OS experience.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Like Windows Phone Lumia, or many Windows tablets.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| yes! Microsoft and Android products have sort of done
| this in the past, but didn't do well in the market or the
| user/dev experience was not great.
| kovek wrote:
| I want to see pen-on-tablet experience that allows
| working without a keyboard.
|
| Then, plug tablet to monitor and "type/write" on the
| tablet.
| MR4D wrote:
| Current iPhone has the power to do so, and can connect
| via ApplePlay and bluetooth. So the only holdup is
| software.
|
| Maybe this year's WWDC will show us something closer to
| that.
|
| I'm holding out hope for this, since they "added" mouse
| support to iPadOS in 2019. There has to be a reason for
| that plus Universal apps, plus SwiftUI, right?
| ianai wrote:
| Maybe they plan to support it for iPadOS devices and
| either no support or stripped down for iPhone. It'd be
| cool if we at one point had desktop power in our pockets
| though. (Yes I know we do to some extent, but it's still
| a bit of a stretch for a daily driver.)
| runjake wrote:
| 1. You mean AirPlay.
|
| 2. You don't need AirPlay, you could drive a monitor and
| keyboard/mouse directly, using an HDMI/USB dongle. But
| yes, as you said, software is the hold up. The rest is
| ready.
| wvenable wrote:
| Samsung Dex is this. I can dock my phone and get a
| desktop experience. I have Visual Studio Code running now
| (though code-server[1]) and Ubuntu userland (via
| Termux/Andronix). Plus all other Android apps running in
| detached windows.
|
| It's unfortunately not even as useful as it sounds but it
| is a start. I'm still at the early stages of setting it
| up for real work.
|
| [2] https://github.com/cdr/code-server
| ianai wrote:
| How responsive is it? Would you mind being limited to
| your Dex without another desktop or laptop to use?
| fmakunbound wrote:
| WTF would you want that for? I'm pretty sure the iPad is not
| designed for general purpose computing.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Would be good for testing on device I suppose, but ooooh, I am
| not too sure how pleasurable coding on a touch interface might
| be, even with physical keyboard. Also, I would hate to de-
| incentivize one of Apple's remaining motivations for paying
| attention to their non-mobile hardware!
| novok wrote:
| Well good news you can use a mouse on the ipad now, along
| with remaping capslock to esc in ios 13.4, all in a 1.5lbs
| computer.
| gadabout wrote:
| I've used Pythonista on my iPad and I adore it. The physical
| keyboard is a personal must-have, but the experience is great
| otherwise.
| qubex wrote:
| The functions that needed to be removed have already been
| removed. What remains is comes already pre-loaded on your iPad
| with iOS/iPadOS. It's called 'Notes'.
|
| The functionality removed was file management, version control,
| compilation, building, and interface design. All the rest (text
| editing) is still already there.
|
| Ha ha, only serious.
|
| Seriously, I doubt Apple is close to allowing a compiler to run
| on an iPad.
|
| EDIT: Apparently a sense of humour is not a common attribute
| around here.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| They already have the Playgrounds app on the iPad.
| qubex wrote:
| You're right.
|
| I'm curious to now whether it's compiled; and if so, what
| the underlying architecture of the compiler and runtime is.
| why_only_15 wrote:
| It's basically JIT compiled with special entitlements
| mayoff wrote:
| https://stackoverflow.com/a/40597747/77567
|
| The evidence is that iPad Swift Playgrounds compiles to
| native code.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Presumably the compiler itself was compiled for ARM. The
| rest doesn't really have to change as the Swift compile
| was already designed to compile for ARM for production
| builds of apps.
| lowdose wrote:
| This is similar to asking Apple if you can summon Alexa instead
| Siri on iOS. Not going to happen.
| liamcardenas wrote:
| How is that remotely similar?
| lowdose wrote:
| Inside the walled garden only Apple plays with the ball.
| jacques_chester wrote:
| Apple have been hiring a number of developer relations and
| community relations folks from Kubernetes-land lately; my
| suspicion was that they were planning to create some kind of
| public platform or runtime service and wanted well-positioned
| ambassadors.
|
| Maybe this is it.
| polyomino wrote:
| Animations introduce each new coding concept at a high level
| before you dive into the puzzles
|
| This sentence says the opposite of what is meant to most non-
| technical people.
| jedberg wrote:
| My daughter has the Osmo, which has a coding challenge. It's very
| similar to this, except it's just arrow tiles and jump tiles that
| you lay out in front of the iPad and then the character moves the
| same way.
|
| I'm going to have her try this (she's five) and see if it's too
| hard since it requires reading (or perhaps it will force her to
| improve her reading skills!).
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| > it's just arrow tiles and jump tiles
|
| The obvious next step for her is Befunge.
| adriansky wrote:
| Looks very nice! It almost made me want to learn Swift.
|
| The only thing is that it's used only on iOS systems. If I'm
| going to spend the time to learn a new programming language, I'd
| like to use it everywhere like I do with JS.
| Grustaf wrote:
| On the other hand there are quite a few ios devices out
| there...
| alexgaribay wrote:
| Swift can be compiled and run on Linux. It's most prevalent on
| Apple platforms. It's usefulness outside of the Apple platform
| is a different topic though.
|
| https://swift.org/about/#platform-support
| derefr wrote:
| I suppose Swift is like a CLR language (e.g. C#) in that
| sense, then? The language itself will run in many places, but
| most of the library bindings anyone might care about, or want
| to use the language to get access to, are for platform-
| specific libraries.
| oldmanhorton wrote:
| For what it's worth, C# is very usable on both Linux and
| macos. Anything outside of UI is pretty much fully cross
| platform at this point (there are even some cross platform
| ui attempts, but they're not anywhere near as mature as
| wpf, xaml, winforms, etc)
| noodlesUK wrote:
| These days there's been a _lot_ of movement towards cross
| platform C#, with .NET core etc. Whilst there isn't any
| desktop application support (other than Xamarin), there's a
| good ecosystem for ASP.NET.
| gumby wrote:
| That's true of most languages, like C++, rust, etc.
| xkemp wrote:
| There's some momentum behind Swift-on-Server, I believe. And
| Tensorflow Swift seems to be a rather serious project.
| melling wrote:
| The Mac app "syncs" with the iPad app. That's useful!
|
| I'm writing a Swift Cookbook on Github for anyone who's trying
| to come up to speed on Swift:
|
| https://github.com/melling/SwiftCookBook
|
| Trying to be more functional with my Swift:
|
| https://github.com/melling/SwiftCookBook/blob/master/functio...
|
| I'm also working through Joel Grus' Data Science from Scratch
| book, but trying to rewrite the examples in Swift. I'm only a
| few chapters in:
|
| https://github.com/melling/data-science-from-scratch-swift
|
| Things I'm doing sitting on my couch with my iPad on the arm
| and the book in my lap.
| gumby wrote:
| > The only thing is that it's used only on iOS systems.
|
| It's also used on the macOS, which is kind of the point of this
| HN posting.
|
| In the magnitude of using a given platform, learning the
| language is a small part; the APIs and tooling will be a larger
| effort. If you already know those things for the iOS, the jump
| to macOS will be less.
| bound008 wrote:
| You may just want to learn a touch of swift to experience nifty
| language features such as optionals. (Unless you have worked
| with languages that have all of swift's nifty features)
| plg wrote:
| Honest question: to what extent is this a fancier-graphics
| version of Logo from the 1960s? (you know, the little turtle with
| which you can draw shapes, by using commands like pen down, pen
| up, move, turn, etc).
|
| Does swift playgrounds teach one other stuff, in particular stuff
| relevant to the MacOS or iOS API?
| inviromentalist wrote:
| Any chance Apple would make it possible to compile an iOS app
| without giving Apple any money?
|
| I want to support my customers, but I don't want to support anti
| competitive FAANG
| darklion wrote:
| > Any chance Apple would make it possible to compile an iOS app
| without giving Apple any money?
|
| Absolutely! It's called a "web application", and you can write
| them in a variety of languages, including compiled ones.
|
| > I want to support my customers, but I don't want to support
| anti competitive FAANG
|
| It's weird, because English is my first language, but I have no
| idea what that sentence means. Perhaps you could elaborate?
|
| FWIW, here's the closest I could come to translating it: "I
| want to write applications that natively run on hundreds of
| millions of devices, which development for, and use of,
| directly supports and props up [an anti-competitive FAANG], but
| somehow as long as I'm exempt from paying them a small annual
| fee, I'm morally and ethically OK with that."
| city41 wrote:
| FWIW I would expect the OP's real objection is having to buy
| a Mac to develop iOS apps, not the annual fee.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| They could buy a used Macbook.
| rickdg wrote:
| The web on iOS is deliberately gimped.
| inviromentalist wrote:
| >It's called a "web application", and you can write them in a
| variety of languages, including compiled ones
|
| Could you post a link on how to?
|
| This sounds like it would solve my problem
| slashblake wrote:
| Real missed opportunity not calling this "Swifty Swift"?
| technoplato wrote:
| I've been a developer for about 8 years now and have even already
| learned a decent amount of Swift.
|
| I still had a blast getting the adorable character (Byte-) to
| navigate around the puzzles.
|
| They even get into some simple yet cool path traversal algorithms
| that I'm sure grow in complexity if you keep going.
|
| I'm going to download these and have a lot of fun with them.
|
| Would love to see this kind of paradigm evolve into more complex
| domains.
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| These types of things really are gateways into computer
| science. I'd like to see it grow too, because early adoption
| really does set students apart.
|
| I wonder how many top students in compsci programs used to do
| things like install and tweak Minecraft plugins when they were
| younger.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Finally! I've been waiting for them to do this.
| donatj wrote:
| QuartzComposer was the best playground. I really wish they'd give
| it some love.
| jawngee wrote:
| Really, QC was one of the cooler things Apple has done since
| HyperCard.
|
| I wrote a video editor that allowed you to use it to build
| plugins with it: https://vimeo.com/121663242
|
| Unfortunately, life got in the way of finishing it.
| umjames wrote:
| I think Apple bought it and renamed it to Quartz Composer. I
| remember you could use it to make screen savers and could
| even write your own patches for it in Xcode.
| tempodox wrote:
| This is nice, to be sure, just too bad it's only for Catalina.
| throwaway55554 wrote:
| It is _really_ frustrating that Apple does stuff like this.
| gumby wrote:
| That they develop new products that show off the capability
| of their new products? It would seem odd to me if they did
| not.
| dewey wrote:
| Being built with the Catalyst framework which is only
| available in Catalina seems like a pretty good reason to only
| have this available in Catalina.
| bangonkeyboard wrote:
| Catalyst (nee Marzipan) apps first appeared in Mojave.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Likely didn't have the required apis then for this to
| run.
| dwaite wrote:
| Catalyst != Marzipan, not even architecturally.
| throwaway55554 wrote:
| I stand corrected. I didn't read far enough to know that
| this was Catalyst.
| [deleted]
| xenonite wrote:
| I am still on El Capitan so I share your disappointment.
| However iPadOS can be used for this app as well.
| ihuman wrote:
| You can still create swift playgrounds in Xcode, but it won't
| have the coding lessons included in this app.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| It's built using Catalyst, their technology for running iOS
| apps on MacOS, which was only launched with Catalina, so
| there's a good reason for this.
|
| I recently got a new Macbook and was dreading having to use
| Catalina, having heard horror stories online, but actually my
| experience has been fine. A few security popups to click
| through when you first run a new app, but some of the screen
| shots I saw online of hundreds of them must have been fake,
| it's really not a problem. Having to right click and open
| unidentified apps can be annoying, but I'd rather do that and
| keep Gatekeeper on personally, rather than disabling Gatekeeper
| entirely.
|
| It actually feels really solid so far (granted its a clean
| install on a new laptop) and I am really impressed with the
| Sidecar feature in particular. Of course, if you depend on
| 32-bit apps or drivers, or certain apps which are meant to be
| buggy (e.g. Mail referenced in another comment), you may want
| to hold off for a while!
| bwilliams18 wrote:
| The reason you didn't see the bevy of popups was because you
| did a clean install. With an upgrade install all of your
| existing apps have to go through the same security steps as a
| new app, and they tend to do it all at once, especially if
| you have a lot of apps that launch at startup. That said my
| experience was not as extreme as some of the screenshots, and
| I think it would be even less for the average user. And of
| course this is only upon first upgrade, so while frustrating,
| you quickly get over it.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I upgraded last weekend and I think the only new security
| prompt I had was from Bartender 3, which needed some new
| "screen recording" permission to see what menuextras you
| have installed. Had to go into the Security preferences and
| turn that on manually rather than just having an "OK"
| button, but it wasn't hard.
|
| Oh, and Terminal had a popup for permission to access
| ~/Desktop
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Ahh, that makes sense I guess!
| oarsinsync wrote:
| Damn! I really enjoyed Swift Playgrounds on the iPad, but found
| the lack of real keyboard irritating. I was about to download
| this until I saw your comment.
|
| My email's too important to risk upgrading to Catalina still.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| I've heard there were data store migration problems and
| haven't had any myself, but is this even an issue if you're
| using IMAP? It's all stored on the server anyways. (I can't
| imagine using POP in this age of multiple devices.)
| haunter wrote:
| Ofc Google had a similar project (with Javascript) but they
| scrapped it back in November... It was even available on Steam
|
| https://github.com/googlearchive/gamebuilder
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20191017085801/http://store.steam...
|
| You can still download the last full build (easier than compiling
| on your own) and it's actually really fun
| https://github.com/googlearchive/gamebuilder/tree/master/bui...
|
| I pretty much hate when they abandon things like that
| mattnewton wrote:
| As a counterpoint, it's labeled as "This is not an officially
| supported Google product." Maybe this isn't enough to stave off
| brand association?
|
| Would you rather they never allow engineers to release it at
| all? When I worked at Apple, that was the fate of any internal
| effort or pet project that did not receive full executive buy
| in, and as an engineer I badly prefer the ability to open
| source projects in whatever state they were left, to be useful
| to anyone who wants to pick the bones or start something
| similar.
|
| Disclaimer: I work for Google, but my opinions are my own.
| slimsag wrote:
| It really bothers me that people so closely associate these
| "Not Google" projects with Google. I've seen repositories
| with not even a README, any documentation, or so much as an
| explanation of _what the project even is_ end up on the front
| page of /r/programming just because "Wow it's a Google
| project!! so interesting I wonder what it does???"
|
| Google is a _huge_ company, not everybody that creates
| something there is showing some internal direction of the
| company..
| SlowRobotAhead wrote:
| It's not really the same as a learning tool, but Google has
| FlutterPad [0] which is an online playground for Flutter app
| development.
|
| Which if you've never played with, it's extremely easy to see
| how Flutter and Dart work. Most online tutorials can be
| completed right in FlutterPad. So Google does know people want
| this, just seem to care more about other things right now.
|
| [0] http://flutterpad.com/
| [deleted]
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Is the get button disabled for anyone else in the mac store?
| mayoff wrote:
| You are probably not running macOS 10.15 Catalina.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| nope,thanks.
| skyfaller wrote:
| Has anyone read through the "Swift Playgrounds 3.2 License
| Agreement"? It's kinda long.
|
| Would it have killed them to use a standard open source license
| like MIT or Apache 2.0? Don't they want as many people as
| possible to learn their pet language?
| kick wrote:
| Playgrounds isn't free software, and for that matter isn't even
| source-available.
| skyfaller wrote:
| That's what I'm saying, if they want as many people to learn
| Swift as possible, why not open source this learning
| software? The Swift language is open source under Apache 2.0,
| clearly the license is not alien to Apple.
| kick wrote:
| I don't disagree with you, but your comment was worded in a
| way that implied you thought it was source-available.
|
| Frankly, Apple probably doesn't care how many people learn
| Swift. Playgrounds is aimed at children, who don't yet care
| about software licensing.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| How will this limit people using it? Are there institutions
| that won't allow it? I don't fully understand the complaint.
| zelly wrote:
| I really wish there were stuff like this for more advanced
| topics. Where's the gamified "write a compiler" course?
| favorited wrote:
| There's the nand2tetris course, which isn't exactly gamified,
| but it's a project-based course where you learn hardware
| fundamentals and assembly as you build a Tetris clone.
|
| https://www.nand2tetris.org/course
| jedberg wrote:
| http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs164/
|
| They have a game called "midterm" every few weeks where you can
| earn points towards a final score. :)
|
| But more seriously, would gamification really help you at that
| point?
| [deleted]
| city41 wrote:
| Some larger screenshots (and more info):
| https://developer.apple.com/swift-playgrounds/
| dmix wrote:
| Is there a good age to start introducing stuff like this to kids?
| My niece is 7 and seems to have the personality that would be
| perfect for a programmer.
|
| But I don't want to rush her into stuff like this when she's
| still a kid who should be having fun.
|
| I was thinking around ~10 would be the ideal time. But I'm not a
| parent and know little about kids and childhood development.
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(page generated 2020-02-11 23:00 UTC)