Inside the walled garden only Apple plays with the ball.

Playground is an Apple product.

And other similar sandboxed code environments already exist for iPad.

What has a shell got to do with it?

> Now, Apple, can we please have the opposite? XCode on the iPad (even if some features had to be removed, like VS Code is to VS), with a containerized shell to run code we write in?

this was the OP.

It’s unclear what that even means. No reason it has to mean Apple allowing a general shell in the sense of a Linux shell.

This is a red herring.

XCode workflow on the Mac doesn’t involve shells. Why should it on iPad?