Swift Playgrounds is what educational apps should be: thoughtfully designed, genuinely challenging, and completely free of the usual digital garbage.

Apple built this to teach real programming, not to harvest data or sell you gems. The progression from 'make the cute character move forward' to 'build a functional app with SwiftUI' is legitimately impressive, and the fact that kids can submit their finished apps to the actual App Store is wild.

The main barrier is hardware—you need a decent iPad—and patience. This isn't a passive activity. Your kid will get stuck. They'll need to debug. They'll have to read error messages and think through logic. That's the point, and it's also why this is so valuable.

If your kid shows even a flicker of interest in how apps work, this is a no-brainer. Even if they don't become a programmer, the computational thinking skills (breaking problems into steps, testing solutions, iterating when things fail) are useful everywhere. And if they do catch the bug? You've just handed them a skill that could shape their career.

Just be ready to sit with them for the first few sessions, especially if they're on the younger end (8-9). Once they get the hang of it, most kids can run with it independently.