Is Silver suitable for Swift newbies?

Elements Silver
1

Hi!
I’m very interested in the Swift programming language, but unfortunately I’m not able to get access to Mac devices to start learning Swift. I was happy when I found Silver which allowed me to do Swift programming on Visual Studio, but after several learning hours, I find that Silver and Swift have more differences than I expected. For instance, here is an example in “The Swift Programming Language”:

for index in 1...5 {
    println("\(index) times 5 is \(index * 5)")
}

but it doesn’t work in Silver. I have to add something:

for index in 1...5 {
    println("\(index) times 5 is \(Int32(index) * 5)")
}

And here’s another example:

let defaultColorName = "red"
var userDefinedColorName: String?   // defaults to nil
var colorNameToUse = userDefinedColorName ?? defaultColorName

It doesn’t work either. After referring to documentation, I think that’s because String is a reference type in Silver, but a value type in Swift.

Is Silver suitable for Swift newbies? Or if only I had a Mac to learn Swift?
Thank you for your help! :]

2

Thanks, logged as bugs://71370

3

Both of those should have worked of course. The idea is that most if not all code you write in Swift works in Silver, however curious that you find two issues after a short time. I’ve logged an issue and will try to fix them for the next build.

4

bugs://71370 got closed with status fixed.

5

Thanks for your reply! I’m now a newbie and just learning the Swift programming language docs. I was confused when I simply pasted example codes into Silver and it doesn’t work, but I think it feels great to go forward with Silver beta! I’ll give you thanks again for outstanding work in Sliver!