Apple’s Swift Playgrounds Help Families Bond Through Code, Learning To Build Apps Together?

Internet and gagdet use may be daunting for many adults. Apple, however, launches Swift Playground, which may help adults keep up with the younger generation.

Apple now makes it easier to learn how to code and design apps with Swift Playgrounds. As Parent Herald reports, unveiled at its annual WWDC keynote in San Francisco, the company aims to serve the app for its younger users, with a gamified interface, an animated character, and easy-to-use language that introduces just about anyone to the world of computer programming through its interactive and learner-oriented modules.

Citign a Parent Herald report, although it is geared for beginners and starting enthusiasts, the open-source programming language can be used even by professionals. "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," says Apple's Craig Federighi. "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 senior VP for Software Engineering adds.

With an interactive graphical platform, the app provides emphasis on the animation and games that interact with the code content, making the chunks of codes easier to digest, creating practical applications through commands, functions, loops, conditional parameters, and variables for just about anything you could think of or imagine. The app also makes use of an intuitive keyboard that makes the coding seamless with the iPad's Multi-Touch interface, with drag-and-drop shortcuts for common code, as well as a pop-over keyword for selecting color values.

A feature of the earlier Swift and Xcode IDE, Playgrounds allows beginners and even advanced coders to quickly compile code through a REPL (read, evaluate, print, loop) style interface, similar to other run-time interpreted languages such as Ruby. The Playgrounds files are small chunks of simplified Swift code which can then be compiled and run on lighter systems, providing output logs for the user while the code is being executed.

As with any learning game, solo challenges are delivered regularly for young learners to improve and up their code game after grasping its basics. Further on, young learners can make use of built-in templates for projects, adding their own content through graphics, commands, and interactions which they can then export as customized code to Xcode, turning their base material into their own, real app.

As parents, you can also join in the fun by collaborating with your child's creation through Swift's sharing functions via Mail, Messages or AirDrop. Now available through the App Store, Swift Playgrounds can build apps for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.