Swift Playgrounds: A Promising Start For Hobby Developers

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It's not perfect and it's definitely not ready for professional use, but from a hobbyist standpoint, Swift Playgrounds is a promising tool - even for game developers. Let me explain.

There are some real benefits to Swift Playgrounds from the hobbyist side of things. First of all, it's super portable being the only way to really write code and publish an app using your iPad. You can even share apps with your friends using AirDrop!

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Additionally, because Apple wrote Swift Playgrounds in a way that removes a lot of the bulk of Xcode you have a lightening fast app even on lower-end hardware which is great for the huge market of educational institutions that would consider the entry-level iPad as an option.

Finally, it might be paired down a bit from Xcode and while that does introduce some limitations, it is not so hamstrung that it's not powerful. You can write full apps with Swift Playgrounds and these apps can even access some of the capabilities that you might need to include to make your app work with the rest of iOS.

#swiftUI #gamedev

Happy coding and I'll see you next week.