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Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds

arstechnica.com

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Re: Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds

#61

Post by swift »

steve_taylor wrote: post #53
greggman wrote: post #46

Swift Playgrounds looks great but I'm surprised no one has mentioned the frustration that Apple is shipping something on iPad that other developers have been banned from making since iPad shipped From the Swift Playground website: > Send your code to a friend’s iPad using Mail, Messages, or AirDrop No other apps are allowed to do this because of the iOS Terms of Service restrictions

Codea has been around for a few years now. It lets you code iPad apps on the iPad using Lua. You can even export the project to Xcode so you can eventually deploy your creations to the App Store. And this is certainly not the only iOS-based coding environment. It looks like Apple has knowingly made an exception for this use case because it's not the type of thing they had set out to prevent with their rules around lo…

Wow; very cool! I've been hoping for something like this ever since I read Bret Victor's essay "Learnable Programming":

http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/

Re: Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds

#62

Post by rimantas »

mathattack wrote: post #59
emmiechang wrote: post #16

We play tested this with 10 year olds at the San Francisco Public Library recently and the kids LOVED it -- keep in mind, these were not middle or upper middle class privileged kids, but lower income at risk ones. The challenge is that after about 45 min of "play" time, they want to 'build' something and create--and Playgrounds doesn't provide the environment to do that. Then, they get bored and feel encumbered. Afte…

We're soon launching an online course Who is we? btw - Every time I see a bunch of 130+ IQ engineers tackle education problems, I get optimistic about the future.

130+ IQ doing anything about any problem does not me give any hope unless those doing have a good understading about it. So far engineers have shown "if the only tool you have is a hammer…" attitude towards the problem than any other.

Re: Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds

#63

Post by eggy »

It seems nice and polished like most Apple products. I'll try it out more, and then with my baby girl when she's a bit older. Apple needed to start addressing the software end a bit more.

For me, I guess having started in 1979 with a Commodore PET and basic and assembly, it doesn't have the appeal. I tried Kotlin a year ago, and Swift looks identical to it to me. I believe in the gamification concept, I just think it is from an adult's view on what they think a child likes, which I guess is inescapable unless you do constant targeting studies and updates. In the end, have children design what children like with an adult's skills at hand to realize it.

I use Codea, Pythonista and now Continous (.NET/F#/C# on an iPad Pro) [1]. I can write add-ons and actions for my iPad apps in Pythonista (Editorial and others) to extend them. I am a polyglot and Scratch is not something I would use to teach my kids, not for any enumerable reasons other than I tried, and it didn't appeal to my kids after the first animation demo program. I know it has been somewhat popular. My older teenage children fared better with Processing, Racket, Minecraft, Arduino and plain Python.

One that has caught my attention, and I will show my youngest child is NetLogo [2]. It is a modeling environment for researchers, business people, and well, basically adults, but it is self-contained, comes with tons of examples, and will be valuable in the future in learning modeling. It's a lot of fun too!

NetLogo's three-tabbed unified interface has the GUI simulation up front, an Info/Documentation page second, and a Code tab. The Code is a variation of Logo. Short programs, and easy syntax with immediate gratification of watching your simulation run. Now just some more kid-friendly examples, and you're off to the races and a PhD in the Mathematical Sciences and Modeling!

[1] http://praeclarum.org/post/147003028753/continuous-c-and-f-i... [2] https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

Re: Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds

#64

Post by fsiefken »

karmelapple wrote: post #9
mikestew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been looking for something similar, discovered that this "something similar" exists, yet the Apple logo puts you off? A used iPad that can run this is probably a couple hundred dollars. Now, perhaps I've misinterpreted your question, and you'd just like a list of alternatives to keep your options open. I've not looked really hard, not having any kids and all, but there seems to be a dearth of options that meet…

HyperCard is great for this, but it's system requirements are likely a little too ancient.

There is a next generation implementation of hypertalk, livecode. It began life as metacard (a hypercard clone) and has now evolved to something that can export to mobile, html5 and multiplatform applications. Basically you program in simple english with a smalltalk message passing philosophy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveCode

Re: Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds

#65

Post by rhinoceraptor »

Longhanks wrote: post #52
greggman wrote: post #46

Swift Playgrounds looks great but I'm surprised no one has mentioned the frustration that Apple is shipping something on iPad that other developers have been banned from making since iPad shipped From the Swift Playground website: > Send your code to a friend’s iPad using Mail, Messages, or AirDrop No other apps are allowed to do this because of the iOS Terms of Service restrictions

Pythonista does the same since months, just for Python code.

You can even do little web servers in Pythonista and access it from the browser. I didn't think iPads allowed that sort of thing.

Re: Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds

#67

Post by naveen99 »

naveen99 wrote: post #56

Looks a lot like lightbot. Better, but would have been nice if they gave some credit to lightbot. iPad swit playground preview video : http://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ Lightbot: https://lightbot.com/

Edit parent: i guess there are other older tools as well, following the reference to karel by binarysolo :

https://codehs.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_van_Rob

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgentSheets

Re: Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds

#68

Post by mathattack »

swift wrote: post #60
mathattack wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're soon launching an online course Who is we? btw - Every time I see a bunch of 130+ IQ engineers tackle education problems, I get optimistic about the future.

How do you know their IQs? I don't think I've ever heard anyone discuss their IQ in real life. I don't mean this as an attack; I'm just curious where the "130+ IQ" qualifier comes from.

I'm just saying that I like seeing smart people work on education.

Re: Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds

#69

Post by karmelapple »

fsiefken wrote: post #64
karmelapple wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HyperCard is great for this, but it's system requirements are likely a little too ancient.

There is a next generation implementation of hypertalk, livecode. It began life as metacard (a hypercard clone) and has now evolved to something that can export to mobile, html5 and multiplatform applications. Basically you program in simple english with a smalltalk message passing philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveCode

A proud user of MetaCard and RunRev for many years! Although these days js, Obj-C, and other more traditional languages are my bread and butter.

Re: Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple’s Swift Playgrounds

#70

Post by greggman »

Longhanks wrote: post #52
greggman wrote: post #46

Swift Playgrounds looks great but I'm surprised no one has mentioned the frustration that Apple is shipping something on iPad that other developers have been banned from making since iPad shipped From the Swift Playground website: > Send your code to a friend’s iPad using Mail, Messages, or AirDrop No other apps are allowed to do this because of the iOS Terms of Service restrictions

Pythonista does the same since months, just for Python code.

That's great but unless they're running Python in WebKit it's actually against the current terms of service

> 3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework, provided that such scripts and code do not change the primary purpose of the Application by providing features or functionality that are inconsistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application as submitted to the App Store.

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