A little milestone passed - I’ve finished the “Learn to Code 1” Playgrounds book. Next is “Learn to Code 2”, and I also see there’s a few more in the default load, including “Get Started with Apps”.
Then there’s a heap more under “More Playgrounds” which I guess is like a mini app store for Playgrounds. Some look like complete (but small) apps - such as “Meme Creator” and “Bubble Level”. Others are filed under “Extend your App” and seem to be focused on particular features such as “Organizing with Grids”.
I’m loving how, in XCode and Playgrounds, it’s constantly sort of compiling or interpreting in the background so errors are being flagged as you’re working. I tried to google the proper name for this but it’s clearly so unremarkable as to be un-remarked on. I guess maybe it’s a commonplace feature of modern IDEs , but for someone who literally used to go to make a coffee when compiling a medium size Clipper , or even years later Visual Studio C++ project, it’s a revelation.
I’m loving Swift Playgrounds - it’s getting daily use switching back and forwards between the iPad and MacBook. It’s sort of amazing that a tool to support education - it seems designed for primary school students, and is certainly being used that way - scales right up to “commercial” level app production.
iPad Pros is a podcast about iPads (unsurprisingly) by Tim Chaten and I listened to a 2017 episode about the launch of Playgrounds 4 with guest Frank Foster. The focus was more about using the iPad as a serious development tool - a la XCode for iPad - than the education possibilities. I’m all for XCode (or something closer) on iPad, but I’d be disappointed if Playgrounds was changed in any way that made it more intimidating for children.
One of the threads that’s led me to learning iOS development is last year’s release of the Swift Playgrounds 4 app. I’ve long had a hankering for a tool to create IOS apps, and a few years ago invested a bit of time in Codea .
Playgrounds possibly started as a little live scratchpad for code in Xcode, but now it’s big news in STEM education for getting kids started on coding. It’s possible to create (and share) Playground “books” that lead users through steps in programming. Playgrounds is supplied with one that covers the beginnings of programing - functions, loops, conditions etc and many more are downloadable. This is actually one of the methods I’m using for picking up Swift basics - I can pick it up in any spare five minutes and solve a puzzle to progress my learning.
