Swift Playgrounds – Future of Coding

THUNDER BAY – Apple is moving to take computer coding into the hands of young people and beginning coders of all ages. For parents, facing teens who might be locked down on their Xbox or Playstation, or focused on endless Youtube, learning to code might be a way to shift directions.

While the full version of Swift Playgrounds will be out this fall, the beta version is available in July – maybe in time for a “Summer of Code”.

“I wish Swift Playgrounds was around when I was first learning to code,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “Swift Playgrounds is the only app of its kind that is both easy enough for students and beginners, yet powerful enough to write real code. It’s an innovative way to bring real coding concepts to life and empower the next generation with the skills they need to express their creativity.”

“The new Swift Playgrounds app from Apple is one of the most powerful, yet approachable, educational coding apps we’ve ever seen, and we can’t wait to incorporate it into our upcoming camp curriculum,” said Jean MacDonald, founder of App Camp for Girls. “It’s a fun and intuitive way for our students to learn the basic principles of coding using the iPad, and also become skilled in Swift, a language that can grow with them in whatever they choose to do.”

Swift Playgrounds is an innovative new app for iPad that makes learning to code fun and easy for anyone.

Swift Playgrounds brings coding to life with an interactive interface that encourages students and beginners to explore working with Swift, the easy-to-learn programming language from Apple used by professional developers to create world-class apps.

Swift Playgrounds includes Apple-developed programming lessons where students write code to guide onscreen characters through an immersive graphical world, solving puzzles and mastering challenges as they learn core coding concepts. The app also features built-in templates to encourage users to express their creativity and create real programs that can be shared with friends using Mail or Messages or even posted to the web.

The library of Apple-developed programming lessons helps students learn core coding concepts, such as issuing commands, creating functions, performing loops and using conditional code and variables, and allows them to progressively build confidence and skill. Apple will regularly release new standalone challenges so students can continue to refine their coding abilities as their skills and interests grow. Educators and developers can also use Xcode to create their own unique challenges for the app.

In addition to the lessons, Swift Playgrounds comes with a number of built-in templates to help aspiring developers express their creativity. Students and developers can modify and build on this code to make it their own by adding graphics and touch interactions. Swift Playgrounds allows you to create a virtually unlimited variety of interactive programs using Swift and the iOS frameworks. You can create empty playground documents or start from one of the built-in templates with scaffolding for graphics and user interface to build powerful apps that respond to touch and accelerometer or that control Bluetooth devices. And since Swift Playgrounds uses real Swift code, projects can be exported directly to Xcode to create programs for iOS and macOS that can ultimately be turned into full-fledged apps.

A preview release of Swift Playgrounds is available now to Apple Developer Program members as part of the iOS 10 developer preview and will be available with the iOS 10 public beta in July. The final version of Swift Playgrounds will be available in the App Store for free this fall. Swift Playgrounds is compatible with all iPad Air and iPad Pro models and iPad mini 2 and later running iOS 10. For more information including videos, images and demos, visit, apple.com/swift/playgrounds.