what is swift playgrounds? -By Neha

 hey guys it's me Neha and today I'm gonna be telling you guys about something called swift playgrounds 

Swift Playgrounds is an educational tool and development environment for the Swift programming language developed by Apple Inc, initially announced at the WWDC 2016 conference. It was introduced as an iPad application alongside iOS 10, with a macOS version introduced in February 2020. 

In addition to publishing the Swift Playgrounds application itself, Apple also produces a series of educational lessons teaching programming and debugging skills. The application can also subscribe to lessons and other content published by third parties, including lessons allowing users to control educational toys such as Lego Mindstorms EV3 and Sphero robots. Apple publishes a curriculum guide for educators wishing to incorporate Swift Playgrounds into their teaching

Swift Playgrounds was designed to be a development environment and an education tool simultaneously.[8] The app allows users to download lessons and challenges. Once stored on the iPad, these can be copied and modified without the need for an active internet connection.

Apple's initial lessons, available for all Swift Playgrounds users to download, introduce three characters: Byte, Blu, and Hopper. In each challenge, young coders are asked to assist these characters achieving simple goals by coding simple instructions. As challenges become more difficult, more complex algorithms are required to solve them and new concepts are introduced.[9] Advanced lessons in Playgrounds introduce users to more complex features such as Apple's Bluetooth and Augmented Reality development platform (ARKit) APIs.[10]

In addition to Apple's own educational content, Swift Playgrounds can download third-party lessons through its subscriptions feature.[5][4] Some third-party lessons allow the app to control robots (such as Lego Mindstorms EV3 and Sphero educational toys) and drones (such as the Parrot).[6] Apple also offers coding classes using Swift Playgrounds at Apple Stores.[11]

Swift Playgrounds was designed to be fully accessible to users with disabilities. It supports Apple's VoiceOver screen reader technology, and at WWDC 2020 Apple introduced a series of lessons called "Swan's Quest" which use accessibility features to help students solve puzzles. 

The Swift Playgrounds application was announced on June 13, 2016, at WWDC 2016 as an iPad exclusive app to help people learning to code with Apple's Swift programming language. A beta version for Apple developers was released on the same date, followed by a public beta version in the following month. The app was presented as a teaching tool for students, introducing the core concepts of coding using an interactive environment designed for touch. The application's name is an apparent reference to Xcode's earlier Playgrounds feature, introduced in 2014.

Along with iOS 10, the app was officially released on September 13, 2016. Apple also published a curriculum guide, recommending the iPad app for middle school students and up. In January 2018, Apple introduced subscriptions to the iPad application, allowing users to subscribe to playgrounds developed by third parties.

On February 11, 2020, Apple released a macOS version of Swift Playgrounds on the Mac App Store, built using Apple's Catalyst technology. Subsequent versions of the application have supported both iPadOS and macOS, with most of Apple's curriculum available on both platforms. For WWDC 2020, Apple published a session instructing third-party developers on how to support both platforms in their subscriptions.

when I heard about this for the first time, I basically thought it was maybe merch by Taylor swift 😂😂😂

not gonna lie, but I have never heard of this software until now, I was just scrolling through my blog ideas list, (which is a list I made on my phone using the notes app)  and suddenly this appeared, 

I do not remember adding this into the list at all, and I googled it and it turned out to be pretty interesting so I thought why not write a blog about it! and that's how we're here now 

anyway, that's it for this blog, I hope you guys enjoyed it! oh and I'm going to be resuming my blog series! so stay tuned for that!