Background
You might have come across our post about learning how to code as a beginner. If not, you can read all about it here. After embarking on our code learning journey we have discovered a not so obvious tool that you can use to help you learn that no one is talking about it. That tool believe it or not, is Apple Shortcuts.
Hear us out
In that post we talked a little bit about why it’s valuable to focus on gaining a deep understanding of fundamental programming operations. IF statements, for loops, switch statements, these are concepts that are not unique to any one programming language but rather are ubiquitous foundations that exist in many languages. The syntactical differences between programming languages, although important to learn will come naturally with repetition and we recommend focusing energy elsewhere.
Apple shortcuts are the perfect playground to do this for a couple of reasons
- There isn’t really a syntax to learn
- The basic scripting functions that are available are just that Basic
- These scripting functions are still very much dependent on data types which will translate to other languages
A few other benefits to apple shortcuts is how lightweight and portable they are. Sure, there are mobile applications that can also teach you programming concepts but most are not free and you will still need to get behind a mouse and keyboard to actually code. The other added benefit is that you can easily find some piece of your digital life to automate that will interest you more than some weird BMI calculator project.
We are NOT saying that you can learn how to code exclusively on Apple Shortcuts, but if you are beginning your code learning journey and want a fun way to shake things up then don’t discount Shortcuts. Start with something basic, something that you truly want to automate and make more efficient about your cellphone experience. Once you achieve your goal, see if you can supercharge your shortcuts and get them to do more for you. This becomes a slippery slope real fast and pretty soon you’ll be automating everything.
The trade off with Apple Shortcuts is that they’re a bit limited in what they can do, still powerful, but you might need some clever work arounds to achieve certain results. The other thing you’ll notice is that as your skills get better in the more robust programming languages, the better you’ll become at scripting Shortcuts. That statement might sound a little obvious but if you find yourself a bit puzzled trying to figure out how to script a specific Shortcut you might draw inspiration from your BMI calculator project that you’re coding in Python. Give it a try, at worst you learn nothing and you create a handy shortcut and at best you have fun and gain a deeper understanding of core scripting concepts.