Show HN: Swifty – Learn to code in Swift | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Swifty – Learn to code in Swift

swifty-app.com

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Sad to see ++ and -- among the first things you learn. Aren't they [slated](1) to be taken out of the language?

1: https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposa...

SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT

Gotta get shwifty!

Pull down your repo and your assets!

Git on the floor!

It's Schwifty time today!

I started a Swift Cookbook a couple months ago. I've got a section on Strings and Arrays.

http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift_cookbook.html?topic=arra...

http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift_cookbook.html?topic=stri...

I could throw up Dates and Dictionaries over the weekend. There's a Playground switch so you can copy-paste the text as a working Playground:

http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift_cookbook.html?format=pla...

This is awesome! More engaging than reading, but not full typing code on your phone.

This is very cool indeed. I have spent a few minutes getting into it on an iPad and it looks like a great learning resource.

I'm very pleased that these resources are coming into being for people wanting to get started in programming and for Swift specifically. The Stanford course is great but too high-level for a lot of people. I have put up projects myself with pre-built modules to hopefully make it easier for people to get started - https://github.com/timburgess/ScienceKit

I've been enjoying this as just a fun thing to do sitting on the couch in the evening. Sit back and learn a bit of swift. Mainly just getting info on syntax. It's surprisingly relaxing.

Looks great, but on the wrong platform. Is there a Mac version in the works?

And an android version, now swift gas gone open source the shackles are off.

Why would there be a Mac version ? Xcode Playgrounds do that job for you.

1. Why the hell is this an iOS app?

2. How the hell is this an iOS app?

Because swift is for apple...?

Not any more, the opensource vesion is here, runs on ubuntu and fedora (i hae got it compiled on fedora). Enterprising souls are right now working on a windows version.

In practice, nobody is seriously writing Swift code (or any other code) on iOS devices. My meaning was I don't understand why this is an iOS app instead of a Mac app or even a web one (like IBM's Swift sandbox[1]).

That being said, I'm kind of impressed someone managed to get an app on the App Store that can do this. I know that Apple loosened its restrictions on code execution on iOS a while back, but as far as I am aware there's no way to compile Swift on ARM… did they write their own compiler/runtime or something?

1: https://developer.ibm.com/swift/2015/12/03/introducing-the-i...

It is a learning tool. Handy to have on a mobile device. Learn while commuting for example.

The lessons and exercises are limited in scope enough that they are entirely static. The work the app needs to do is limited to parsing, stylizing, checking (simple) syntax and matching user input to the task, not executing it. The lessons themselves are no more complex than a programming PPT presentation that looks prettier.

All the more reason iOS is a bizarre platform for this, then.

What's bizarre about it? Apple developers tend to own other Apple devices and are likely to want to learn Swift on the go.

Not a crazy question, but I'm guessing it's so users can feel comfortable learning Swift wherever they are. Yes, it's true that you should be on Xcode for serious development but I'm guessing this is aimed at the user who has never coded in Swift before.

Why is this downvoted so heavily? Seriously, how is this implemented? I don't think Emscripten works with Swift yet, and even if it did, there hasn't been enough time since the open source release to implement an entire app.

1) It's kind fun, like an interactive text book.

2) Not actually running any (of your) code, or coding really. Tap this to fill in a string, or to select an operator from a few approved.

Umm, I used it while sitting in my daughters' swimming gala for several hours. It was splendid. At one point in the tutorial they suggest that you might want to open Xcode alongside, but tutorials on the Tube etc. are great.

Get shwiftyyyy

Android version?

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