A Swift Introduction to Swift App Development (Abstract Only)
Michael P. Rogers, William M. Siever · 2015
Swift is a new programming language recently introduced by Apple as a replacement for Objective-C. Considering that Objective-C ranks third on the Tiobe Index and is the progenitor of virtually all the 1.2 million apps in the App Store, Swift is likely to become the dominant language for creating both iOS and OS X apps. While Swift is aimed at application developers, the language and the tools that accompany it are also a boon for CS educators. Many of the features in Swift that aid commercial development, such as type-safety, clean syntax, closures, and named parameters, are also beneficial when learning programming. In addition to the language itself, Apple has introduced a remarkable feature called Playgrounds. As the name suggests, Playgrounds allow students to "play", that is, to interactively experiment, with code. They also provide a convenient visualization tool to graphically depict the impact of iteration, providing crucial insights for novice programmers. It is also possible to use Playgrounds to write tutorials or even entire textbooks with embedded, live code for students to experiment with. The workshop will introduce Swift through the use of Playgrounds. Participants will work through a variety of hands-on, active learning exercises to learn Swift's syntax and semantics. More importantly, they will experience a sample of active learning exercises that can be used in to introduce students to programming with Swift.