> With something that Apple calls an “interactive playground,” Swift is even exploring a highly visual kind of programming that may go beyond other mainstream languages
I thought the "interactive playground" was just a REPL, is it something more?
I thought the "interactive playground" was just a REPL, is it something more?
It doesn't work at the level of single expressions. It's more like a script editor that re-runs the script in realtime, as it's edited. It also allows real-time inspection of values, with useful visual representations (e.g. graphs of values over time, colours, paths, images etc.)
It's pretty cool, though I'm not sure how much use it is over a regular debugger for an experienced programmer. Great for playing around with though.