Show HN: Swifty – Learn to code in Swift

avyfain 10 years ago |

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...

antidamage 10 years ago |

SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT

robotmlg 10 years ago | |

Gotta get shwifty!

jibberia 10 years ago | | |

Pull down your repo and your assets!

pablovidal85 10 years ago | | |

Git on the floor!

sidcypher 10 years ago | | |

It's Schwifty time today!

melling 10 years ago |

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...

gravitronic 10 years ago |

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

magicbuzz 10 years ago |

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

pgroth 10 years ago |

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.

dcip6s 10 years ago |

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

sanjeetsuhag 10 years ago | |

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

thawkins 10 years ago | |

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

Cyberdog 10 years ago |

1. Why the hell is this an iOS app?

2. How the hell is this an iOS app?

joslin01 10 years ago | |

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.

Terribledactyl 10 years ago | |

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.

cballard 10 years ago | |

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.

Angostura 10 years ago | |

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.

jamisteven 10 years ago | |

Because swift is for apple...?

thawkins 10 years ago | | |

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.

Cyberdog 10 years ago | | |

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...

jonsen 10 years ago | | |

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

kazazes 10 years ago | | |

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.

Cyberdog 10 years ago | | |

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

nilliams 10 years ago | | |

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

Exuma 10 years ago |

Get shwiftyyyy

eecks 10 years ago |

Android version?