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Apple Introduces Swift Playgrounds App To Teach Kids To Code (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: At their Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco today, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "We believe coding should be a required language in all schools." To help achieve this goal, Apple introduced Swift Playgrounds, a new app that is meant to teach kids basic coding skills in Apple's chosen language. It teaches concepts like loops and conditionals, and uses an animated character tasked with performing simple challenges in a digital maze to help make learning fun. The app also offers suggested coding languages and will be completely free. Tim Cook described it as "a powerful new way for kids to learn to code," and went on to compare writing code to basic literacy. "I wish Swift Playgrounds was around when I was first learning to code," said Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi. "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. 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." Apple announced a host of new features and improvements made to iOS and Mac OS X. Not only did they announce that OS X will now be called macOS, but the first version update will be called macOS Sierra. One of the biggest new features of the new OS is support for Siri.
Anybody remember Logo, with all those drawing turtles? I remember my first introduction to recursion was in Logo.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So that fetuses will pop out already knowing how to code Swift.
Its just in their interest. The more people can code, the less they have to pay them.
Swift features seem to get depreciated so quickly, it's highly likely that it'll be completely obsolete by the time they are grown up
Swift has distributed multiprocessing support now? Cool!
Of all of the new programming languages that are out there, the future looks exceedingly bright for Swift.
The new languages I'm referring to are Go, Rust, Swift and Scala.
The worst of them is Rust. Its problems are numerous, ranging from a single buggy implementation, to awkward semantics, to a limited standard library, to a community that's hyper-focused on codes of conducts and forcing "tolerance" on all, to extreme hype. It doesn't help that it's backed by Mozilla, which a lot of people have their doubts about now that Firefox's market share has been dropping so low. Rust is generally seen with distrust by many.
Go was looking promising for a while. It's backed by Google, and generally has good semantics. It has two implementations, including one built upon GCC. It has a reasonable community, and a large selection of high quality libraries. The language itself is quite primitive, and feels like it never got out of the 1990s, and its semantics and syntax both underwhelm.
Scala was also looking promising for a while, but it ended up being extraordinarily complex, and very slow. Targeting the JVM ended up being a mistake, as it limited the usefulness of Scala for many users. Its community also remained quite small. Scala combined the worst of the Java mindset of unnecessary complexity with the worst aspects of functional programming.
Swift, on the other hand, has everything going for it. It's backed by Apple, and has already seen much use for real applications. It has been continually improving, even if this means some breakage (which isn't a problem even for the least-skilled of developers). Its semantics are superb, and very practical. Its syntax is clean and easy to work with. It's modern and fast. Its standard library is getting better and better. Now that it has been open sourced and is supporting other platforms it is becoming a real winner for lots of programmers.
If we look ahead 10 or 20 years, we'll very likely see Swift being the only one of those four languages seeing any real use. We've already seen Scala pretty much drop out of existence in practice. Go is starting to stagnate. Rust never even got out of the gate to begin with, and likely won't go anywhere in the long run as there are doubts that Mozilla will even be around in a few years (or if they are, they may not be able to fund Rust's development). Swift is the only one that's seeing real growth, and it's the kind of growth that we've seen from mainstays like C++, Java and C#.
Although it's a young language, Swift is already showing that it has the staying power to be the sort of language that's still happily used decades from now.
Computer programmers are nerds. Software developers are college educated nerds. Nerds are losers. Coders are millionaire rockstars who GitHub for Uber, bro. Coders are cool social winners.
This is so much malarky I shudder to think what they do to their own kids, if any.
And in the 1800s all schoold had to teach horsemanship, horseshoe making and carpentry.
How about they learn some math, a language or two, and reading ( both reading and analysis/logic of what is being read )?
How about writing skills? ( composition, if keyboard )
History ( NON ADJUSTED ! )?
How about they also get some low-level medical training? ( Red Cross? Civil Defense? )
What about puzzles, poker, and DIY kits?
And - the utter disgrace - how to get along, etiquette, how to follow rule and play games?
You know, like normal kids....
"in Apple's chosen Open Source language" FTFY
Perl Programmer for hire
I'm assuming since it's an app it doesn't actually do anything outside of its little box. So the trick will be if it's easy for a kid learning in the Playground to then create a real executable to do whatever they want to their computer.
Hint: Tim Cook is gay. He has no children.
Executives who do have children keep them away from computers. They send them to schools where they do not get iPads, where they do not stare at Swift Playgrounds, where they do not learn to code. That's for other people's children, apparently.
What will "coding" replace in the currently expected education of students coming out of high school? Thirty percent of them admitted to college are unprepared for college courses and end up taking remedial work or flunk out. It could get worse with added course work. I could name any number of studies that probably would get short shrift but readers could figure them out. It's my understanding that in some states like where I live there are a minimum number contact hours required per year in school so if there are weather closures the hours must be made up. In another state I know that if the school bus delivers students to school and they turn around and immediately get back on the bus for a trip home that counts as one of the minimum required attendance school days. Are we going to add hours or school days for coding class?
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Compared to what? Microsoft's C#? Oracle's Java?
I think you're missing something like "CODERS make APPS!" in there.
But they're getting introduced to the basic concepts of how computers work. Loops, if/else, variables, etc.
They see the character on the screen being a total dumbass that only does exactly as its told, like a computer.
The only thing they need to remember is that last part: "Computers are dumb, remember that when using a computer."
I have lost track of how many "teach the great unwashed masses to program/code" initiatives and gimmicks have come out since Logo. Has anyone anywhere actually done a real-world study to see if people subjected to this force-feeding actually becoming credible working programmers, or maybe even developers? And I don't mean a web "developer." I learned to program (many decades ago) because my job required it, I found out I enjoyed it, and I had things that I needed to do with it. Any time I want to learn a new language I wait until I find a project that could actually make use of the new language. Just coding some random thing that someone else thinks is neato-keeno (I said I've been doing this for decades) never taught anyone how to do anything. So, are there some hard studies on which to base throwing more money at this problem?
Let me ask a related but narrower question: How long ago was it that Apple and Microsoft stopped including a programming language within the operating system that is capable of reading and writing files chosen by the user, other than by copying and pasting between a text editor and the browser?
LOL this needs to be +5 funny.
It's sitting at -1 troll. I guess he made someone on the rust moderation team mad.
Apple used to include XCode on the DVD (or CD set) that came with their computers. Today, it's on the app store instead, and is free. You would only have to pay to get your app included on the app store. To program for yourself, on the Mac, is free.
Microsoft makes a free version of Visual Studio, but it's rather limited. You can download it.
Of course, neither of these is actually *included* within the OS in terms of being there by default, pre-installed, on every new computer. If that's what you meant, well...Apple never included such a thing on the Mac, ever (though the Apple II had it), and Qbasic went away with Windows 95, I think.
Simple and easy starter stuff? Ideally in a language which is going to stick around? (or the lessons are adaptable in another language)
Hardly. Nobody was ever hooked on coding when exposed to it when they where young. Hooked on shiny new objects. Coding, know. It's boring and some guy from India will be doing it on an H1B Visa. Best spend time learning another trade.
They won't sue first because it doesn't look or feel like scratch and second because the whole point of it is help kids learn and either would be a success.
Now please says "MacOS Sierra Siri" 5 times fast. I can't believe they went from an easy soft vocalization of "Oh ESS ECHS" to MAK AWS. You don't put a soft word like Sierra after MacOS you need an assonant word like Tomhawk or KillerKlown. Then you change the name of Siri to something like Zika.
Bad move.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Apple never did stop including such a language. Python is bundled with the OS.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
It's an iPad app.
There are a surprising number of schools here in the UK where the children are expected to own an iPad. Apple offers heavy discounts for educational use and easy payment terms.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
But they're getting introduced to the basic concepts of how computers work. Loops, if/else, variables, etc.
They see the character on the screen being a total dumbass that only does exactly as its told, like a computer.
The only thing they need to remember is that last part: "Computers are dumb, remember that when using a computer."
Well, if I were a kid, I think I would find it a lot more engaging than the typical first (well, second (not counting "10 GOTO 10") BASIC program output back in the day:
1
12
123
1234
12345
123456
1234567
123456789
Apple never did stop including such a language. Python is bundled with the OS.
Actually, the list is a lot more extensive...
And that doesn't include AppleScript and JavaScript, which are target-able in XCode. Even without XCode, AppleScript even has an IDE of sorts (AppleScript Editor).