The Xcode cliff
Swift Playgrounds is a wonderful introduction to programming. It introduces imperative logic, functions, methods, loops, and many of the marvelous APIs that are available to iOS developers. But it’s called a “playground” for a reason: you can’t make an app with Swift Playgrounds. You play with code, you learn about code, and you do indeed code. But if you want to build something useful and distributable, you need to look elsewhere. Some popular options are Codea , which allows you to build full apps in Lua on your iPad; Pythonista , which offers a Python IDE and a number of popular libraries to work with; and of course there’s always the cloud . But inside the Apple ecosystem, this “elsewhere” is called Xcode. It’s a huge and complicated application that runs only on Macs, and requires an Apple Developer account to effectively distribute the software you build. SWIFT PLAYGROUNDS’ PENCHANT FOR HIDING TRUE COMPLEXITY MAKES IT HARD TO RECOMMEND I probab...