Hey, guys.
Just wanted to know what you think of the swift playgrounds app for iPad. Personally, I love the app, and I love the challenge of solving the puzzles. I think it's a great way to learn the swift programming language.
But what do you guys think? Do you think it's a good way to learn to code? Do you find solving the puzzles challenging? I think this would make an interesting discussion.
By molly, 20 December, 2016
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
Puzzles in full screen
I have an iPad mini and sometimes it is difficult to move around a puzzle grid accurately. Have you run into this?
I also have an iPad mini.
I also have an iPad mini. sometimes I find it hard to figure out exactly how the grid is laid out but I also noticed that the app seems to be really slow at times. also lessons that have been previously downloaded have to be downloaded again for some reason I don't know if it's because my iPad is only a 16 GB tablet but it's probably just my crappy Wi-Fi connection.
My thoughts
I have not used this app in a while now, but I did give it a try when it came out.
The app makes complete sense from a visual perspective, but I found that, as a blind user, I was spending more time figuring out the layout of each puzzle than actually solving it. I also found the app to be slow, and I even had it crash a couple of times, but that may be because I was using it on an old iPad Air. I haven't tried it on my current iPad Mini 4, which is a much faster device and may run the app more smoothly.
I used to enjoy coding when I was a kid, and I tried to make a career out of it, but I was never able to make the switch from procedural programming, which I learned back then, to object oriented programming, which seems to be what everyone uses nowadays. I can read and understand code in object oriented languages like C++ or Swift, but composing is an entirely different matter, because I have difficulty thinking that way. I was kind of hopeful that this app may help me get over that barrier so that I can actually do some coding today, as a hobby at least, but I very quickly found that the lessons in the app would not tell me anything I didn't already know, apart from the Swift syntax. Not Apple's fault, or anyone else's, but rather a limitation of my own brain I suppose.
There are some things I would really like to code and run, either on my Mac or on my iPad, but if I can't get comfortable in today's programming environment, it's not going to happen.