Some highlights.

FUNNER PLAYGROUNDS

Rich documentation markup (reStructuredText) is now supported. The Xcode release notes note that  markups may not always render properly (known 6.3 beta 2 issues). In the following screenshots, the marked up comment (created with a /// indicator) renders properly in 6.3

in 6.1:

in 6.3:

Results are now shown in-line instead of the timeline view. So you pop-up a visualization by clicking the eye in the results gutter or…

or by clicking the value history dot:

The three buttons at the top right indicate graph mode, current value, and “all values”, a history list of values.

What’s great about the inline stuff is that you can more or less close off your assistant editor. I’m still not sure why there’s no timer slider on this new version. Is it gone for good? Oh there it is! At the bottom of the playground pane!

IF LET REFORM

Beta 2 also introduces extended if let with leading boolean conditionals. You can now perform tests with a boolean phrase before adding a if-let conditional unwrapping:

ZIP LINES!

The new zip function takes two sequences to create tuples.

OTHER THINGS

• RIP utf16Count, recently discussed. Instead “use count on the UTF16 view of the String”, e.g. count(string.utf16)
• More intermittent SourceKitServices crashes have been addressed and “Several common issues affecting the “Convert to Latest Swift” tool have been fixed.”