Apple’s making Swift open source earlier this week has already bore fruit, as IBM on Friday unveiled their IBM Swift Sandbox website. The website allows users to type in lines of Swift code into an editor on the right pane of their web browser, and see the results in the right-hand pane.
This is all made possible by the fact that Swift is now open source, supporting Linux alongside iOS and OS X.
The Sandbox allows use of the core Swift language and standard library functions. The concept is similar to apps like CodeRunner, but it runs entirely from a cloud infrastructure.
As 9to5Mac notes, the Sandbox is more of a cool tech demo thing at the moment, but it does give a peek at what is possible now that Swift has been released into the wilds of the open source jungle.
“We love Swift here and thought you would too so we are making our IBM Swift Sandbox available to developers on developerWorks.”
While it may seem unusual to see IBM offering support for Swift like this, remember that IBM and Apple are already collaborating on enterprise projects aimed at brining iOS and iPads into the corporate world. IBM is also allowing its employees to use Macs if they wish.
