Issue 749

1^st May 2026

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

I first wrote about Ale Mohamad’s idea of a marketplace for Swift playgrounds in early 2025, when Swift Playgrounds removed its subscriptions functionality. At that time, he had created a playgrounds section on his site, allowing a selection of playgrounds to be downloaded.

That turned out to be just a prototype for what he announced this week. He has built a proper community-driven index site for Swift playgrounds. It’s based on the same JSON feed that Apple designed, meaning if you had playgrounds content prepared for the Playgrounds app, it’ll seamlessly import into his site.

Playgrounds remain one of the best on-ramps into Swift, and a discovery layer for community-made content is exactly what’s been missing since Apple removed the subscriptions functionality. So, if you run a blog or otherwise produce educational content for Swift, I’d encourage you to consider adding your code snippets to playgrounds and creating a feed to allow the site to index them.

It could become an incredibly valuable resource for the community if we all get behind it.

– Dave Verwer

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News

Does this deserve a “Finally” comment? It’s good to see it happen, regardless. That CocoaPods read-only trunk deadline will come around sooner than we think. As far as I can tell, React Native still currently requires pod, but it appears that they are also almost there. 👍

Tools

Whether to use Xcode’s Groups vs Folders is always a bit of a puzzler for developers, and Xcode has flipped back and forth on which should be the default in various versions. Vera Dias has some advice that should quiet down your pbxproj diffs once and for all.

Remember when apps used to come with meticulously designed DMG backgrounds that included the branding, colour scheme, and the ever-so-gentle hints that you should drag the app icon into your Applications folder? Well, that era doesn’t need to be over if you use 陽炎窓’s free and open source DMG production tool.

Code

I enjoyed this balanced look at adopting AI tooling from Ash Furrow:

I credit Nilay Patel of The Verge for being the first person to articulate this idea in a way that resonated with me: AI technical innovation is impressive only if it can be used to build something impressive. And generally, it can’t. But for coding specifically, it can.

I think you’ll find it worth reading, especially if you’ve been resisting using them so far.

Bringing Swift into the real world is way beyond any expertise I have, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find it interesting. If you’re interested in robotics and Swift, you’ll also enjoy Artem’s announcement of IndustrialKit and the various video demos (1, 2, 3). Fascinating.

Phil Boyd makes a great point that we shouldn’t rush to speed things up too much:

There’s a well documented cognitive phenomenon called the incubation period. Basically it’s the idea that you can better solve problems when you step away from the problem. You gain clarity you otherwise forfeit while trying to grind. Every engineer has experienced this. They have a complicated technical issue they can’t solve until they finally step away for a walk or coffee.

And finally...

“I still find it so cool that my work on this allows me to say that I ‘commissioned a cartographer’ to work on something for me.”