Time to pause for breath, I think, for macOS and Xcode. Apple needs to bring the docs up to date, and attend to the detail.
Swift
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.
A frustrating first day trying to get Xcode’s Swift playgrounds to display simple dialogs and alerts.
Can this app really offer a “modern alternative to AppleScript”? Probably not yet, but it is young, and still an excellent Swift playground.
The best response to change is to see how you can exploit it. Let’s get ahead of the field, for once.
An extensive listing of books, courses, example code libraries, coding environments, and more to help you get going in Swift 3.
I’m heartbroken that AppleScript is going, and grieving at the departure of Sal Soghoian, but I’m looking forward to getting to grips with the scripting tools of the future.
We need a bridge between Swift Playgrounds, Raspberry Pi, and other educational environments, and full-blown SDKs. That includes RAD tools and the likes of Console.
The Eclectic Light Company 