How SwiftUI helps kids create their first iOS apps

When Swift first appeared in 2014, it was designed to be an easy first programming language. Semi-colons are not required to end each line, conditional statements do not need to be inside brackets, and it is not necessary to end every case of a switch statement with a break. This makes it easier for kids to write their first code without needing to constantly look out for missing punctuation. The language was made more accessible when Apple released the Swift Playgrounds iPad app in 2016, making it even easier to learn the basics in a classroom or at home even without a computer.

Storyboards were always a slightly different prospect.

To design the visual layout of an app, Apple’s advice was always to drag and drop a button, a slider, or a switch onto what they call a ‘storyboard’. But what if you want to edit the XML code of the storyboard directly? The XML is a mess. It’s unreadable and impossible to imagine visually. To fit different screen sizes, you need a lot of layout constraints that only add to the complexity. There are a huge number of tags and attributes for every single element of your user interface.

The XML needed to be completely replaced if it was going to match the simplicity of Swift.

At WWDC 2019, Apple announced that it had done just that. After years of advising…