This will help young programmers solidify the connection between giving the computer logical commands and what is outputted on the screen immediately.
Reminds me of how excited I was when Processing (http://www.processing.org/) was released which made it dead simple to interact with a screen and graphics. Didn't have live feedback, but it made it incredible easy to understand OOP.
How do you see it as revolutionizing programming education? I'm pretty ignorant in this area, but it seems like a very high level language that abstracts a ton of stuff - and very platform specific too if I'm not mistaken. Is that really where we want people to start? I would have thought either a highly graphical language with buttons and widgets for early education, then moving onto platform-agnostic stuff like java and obj c would be the thing to do. Maybe you're talking about later stuff, college and beyond, which makes sense - at that point specialization to this extent seems like a good idea. But as I said, I'm pretty out of touch.
I work with someone who previously was a college professor teaching computer science. The university decided to standardize on Mac and iOS hardware, and teach how to program iOS apps as a way to make the CS program more popular.
Trouble was, teaching the entire XCode and Objective C tool chain was not a particularly easy entry point for learning how to develop programs.
(Maybe there were other prerequisite programs, but still, you need to understand C to really understand why a lot of things are the way they are in Objective C, in addition to message passing and object orientation, pointers, and other quirky stuff in order to really wrap your head around iOS development.)
Swift and the corresponding tools look like they would have been a godsend for teaching that class. A more practical way to get students started writing programs they can actually run on their phone.
Swift doesn't look more high level than other scripting languages, but higher level than Obj-C yes, but also much more modern with a good toolset which will probably boost dev productivity.
Can we talk about the line height and weight on the font of their blog? Hate to be a classic HN commenter, but it makes it almost impossible to read on mobile. Very little of my screen is actual black pixels, mostly just white space between lines and characters...
I would call it more "design complaining" and it honestly gets tiring because in every single thread there's someone complaining about how a header or slightly too thin font or or less-than-perfect margins or some other minor nitpick makes the site "impossible to read".
This isn't a comment about layout, it's a comment saying that the content can't be read because it's following that current trend of gray-on-white (that only Apple monitors seem to be able to present as intended). Sure, nitpicks about layout are annoying, but it's perfectly reasonable for someone to complain that they can't access the content.
I read this article on an android phone in chrome, and while the text is a bit gray, it was still very easy to read. Unless your settings are way off, I can't imagine the colors are impossible to read outside of absurd hyperbole.
Something doesn't have to be "impossible to read" to make it inaccessible. Something written in Russian is inaccessible to me, as I don't read Russian. But it's not "impossible to read" - I can learn Russian; I can ask a friend; or most easily, I can use a translation tool to convert it to English. None of these are absurd hyperbole, but the content would be inaccessible without putting effort into it. When it comes to design, you generally want to avoid barriers to the user experience - and given that this is an article on a design topic concerning approachability and accessibility, my opinion is that it's fair game. Also, not everyone has 'normal' vision, which is another point to remember - text that is 'a little off' can be much worse for someone who is already near the boundaries.
In any case, it looks like the author has gone back and darkened the text (or am I imagining things?)
You know, its good when says "On a side note, the website's font and layout are not optimized for the mobile. If the author's seeing this, please do something about it". It's even better to comment on the blog post, the author can see it!
But not when someone wants to start discussing about it. It's been a headache to many since months now. Responsive websites are not always perfect. And HN's not the right place to discuss about it.
OMG THIS IS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER READ. CHANGED MY LIFE.
But seriously, I try to over share with my close friends because I know I can handle their criticism. Impressed by Ryan's courage to receive such personal feedback from anyone on the internet.
You're getting downvoted, but it's not really clear why. I'll upvote you if you explain what you meant. It seems like to the downvoter, you are being snarkily sarcastic with your caps.
Whereas, perhaps you are satirizing snarkily sarcastic comments? Or you genuinely feel that way? If you explain a bit I'm sure your comment will do fine.
