My entry for the 2025 Swift Student Challenge

Overview

The idea of this app is to frame the evolution of neural networks as a series of stories in a timeline, making it engaging and memorable. Each "time period" has a mini-narrative, introducing key breakthroughs or ideas in the context of their era.

Key Features

• Build your own neural network: Visually construct and customize your own neural network;
• Draw and predict: Draw digits and watch as the MNIST model predicts them in real time;
• Interactive visualizations: Understand the inner workings of neural networks through engaging shader animations.

Frameworks

• Metal API - for shader rendering;
• CoreML - for the MNIST model;
• SwiftUI line and circle shapes - for neural network node representation.

Running the SwiftUI Playground

The interactive experience is built as a SwiftUI playground named Brian. Follow these steps to run it on your machine:

1. Clone the Repository:

   git clone https://github.com/josevalencar/SSC-25.git
   

2. Open the Playground:

• Navigate to the project directory.
• Open the file Brian.playground in Xcode.

3. Run the Playground:

• In Xcode, click the play button at the bottom left of the playground window or go to Editor > Run Playground.
• Ensure your Xcode version supports SwiftUI.

4. Explore and Experiment:

• Interact with the playground to build and visualize neural networks.
• Modify code snippets to see how changes affect your neural network's behavior.

Considerations

I want to dedicate this app for my dad, mom, and friends who supported the development, with special thanks to my college professors Guilherme Cestari and Murilo Zanini.