Apple made Swift, it’s programming language for iOS, OS X and watchOS, open source last week. Clearly IBM is excited because it has responded swiftly (sorry, couldn’t resist) by releasing the Swift Sandbox tool which lets you write and execute Swift code in a Linux server environment. Here are the details.
IBM Swift Sandbox is currently in beta and provides a playground for developers to toy around with Swift in the comfort of a web browser. Each sandbox runs on IBM’s cloud infrastructure in a Docker container and developers can use both the standard and latest versions of Swift’s library. IBM has also provided a collection of sample programs that you can experiment with.
By making the IBM Swift Sandbox, it seems the vendor is eager to deepen its relationship with Apple. It already has a partnership with the Cupertino-based company to offer Apple hardware to enterprise customers. IBM is one of Apple’s largest corporate customers as well.
In a blog post on the IBM developer website, John Petitto, an Swift developer at IBM, hinted at future Swift projects from the company:
“With the movement of Swift to open source, we’re opening the doors on what we are working on at IBM with Swift. The IBM Swift Sandbox barely scratches the surface of what’s possible.
If you’re new to Apple’s Swift programming language, you can read the official language guide to get started.
If you’re already familiar with Swift, you can use the IBM Swift Sandbox over at the company’s developerWorks website.
[Via IBM developerWorks blog]
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