Playgrounds >= Xcode
I gave a talk at /dev/world in May 2024 that put forward an argument that Swift Playgrounds is a much better featured and more useful tool than many are aware of. It has evolved since it was first released and is now capable of a whole lot more. I also suggested if we are to see development natively on Apple Vision Pro, then it’s much more likely to come in the form of Playgrounds than Xcode.
Xcode obviously isn’t going anywhere, but I can imagine that the “new” project has a quicker path to new features and improvements over dealing with the legacy and enormity of a 21 year old codebase.
Swift Playgrounds has come along way since its inception 10(!) years ago. Marketed as an education tool, known as a scratchpad for toying with ideas. However since version 4, it’s been possible to develop and release full applications, turning Swift Playgrounds into a full IDE.
The first improvement of the Playgrounds approach is your project is packaged up into folder. Consisting of a package.swift, which defines the details of the application, a much cleaner approach than the PBX project file from an Xcode project. In fact a brand new Playground contains 45 lines of understandable swift vs 350 lines of complexity.
