How little has changed in using assembly language over the last 30+ years. But what about Swift Playgrounds 4, which will let iPads create apps for the App Store?
playground
Numbers has a lightweight interface and is easy to use. But does it handle numbers as accurately as Excel, or maths environments like Matlab?
Swift Playgrounds are attracting a lot of young people to learn to code. But what do they do when they’re ready to write ‘proper’ apps? Where are Apple’s guides and example code?
The moment you start writing apps that work with documents, you’ll need to know how to use UTIs. That requires inspired searching, guesswork, and trial and error.
In some respects at least as good as any other Swift playground product, and its AppleScript support has improved considerably. But in other respects still falls short. In a class of one.
Making progress with Consolation version 2: working out how to export useful data from JSON log excerpts. A punch-up in the Swift Playground.
What more is needed if Swift is going to realise its promise as a scripting language for macOS?
There’s no point trying to script in Swift if you can’t deploy it to a user’s Mac. Here are two solutions available now.
Running shell scripts from Swift playgrounds is easy, but there’s more work needed to support droplets and folder actions.
A success at last: scripting file operations works now. But don’t trust much of the documentation; it just frustrates.
The Eclectic Light Company 