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iPad Pro as Development Machine

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Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#71

Post by dominotw »

melq wrote: post #25
laurentdc wrote: post #8

This topic comes up every month or so, and there's always this catch: > we need to first create a remote workstation which we can start using as our main development machine. A dumb terminal isn't a development machine. That's like saying "Using my DEC VT100 terminal to develop in Go", let me just hook it up to an actual computer

This is not a very good argument. I do my development work on my company issued macbook, but its not like I'm doing my work locally. My several thousand dollar macbook pro acts as a terminal interface for me for a HUGE proportion of my work. All my code is developed/built/run/tested on remote machines and my laptop is just a fancy interface to them.

Devops/Secops/ITops ppl seem to fall into this usage pattern.

i assumed OP is talking about "development" machine implying some code writing.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#72

Post by pedalpete »

About 6 years ago I set-up my HP Touchpad running linux and tried to use it as a development machine.

It was running ArcLinux, node 0.4 (if I remember correctly).

I'm not going to suggest that this was the "future of computing" and I put it away after playing with it for a bit.

I'm not an Apple user and don't have an iPad (pro or other) but I do think we will move away from "pc" needed as your development platform.

At one point we would have said that a notebook wasn't good enough for development, you need a "real pc" (desktop) for development.

With AR/VR we'll move into completely new realms of interfaces for development, I wouldn't rule out a tablet as one of the form factors of the future.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#73

Post by [deleted] »

laurentdc wrote: post #8

This topic comes up every month or so, and there's always this catch: > we need to first create a remote workstation which we can start using as our main development machine. A dumb terminal isn't a development machine. That's like saying "Using my DEC VT100 terminal to develop in Go", let me just hook it up to an actual computer

[deleted]

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#74

Post by HenryBemis »

No way Jose! I am about to update my iOS app, for both iPhone and iPad. I need to add some sounds. That means find an online library, get/buy the sounds, then use Audacity to tweak them. Then watch some Udemy video-classes I bought, then take screenshots/notes and star updating my SWIFT code. The only thing I am doing on my Mac is to type the code on Xcode and run the simulator (and then ofc pack, sign, and upload to Apple).

Everything else (downloading, tweaking sounds, watching classes, reading on Apple's Feb resources, etc. I do on my Windows laptop. I do have an iPad, but it is as good as a video player/kindle. Perhaps I am just lazy and don't bother to learn how-to-ipad-everytbibg, but a PC will always (imho) be more useful than most other alternative options out there.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#75

Post by frosted-flakes »

alpaca128 wrote: post #34
maxxxxx wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Surface Pros are full fledged machines and quite powerful if bought with the right spec (not cheap though). Just get the keyboard cover. No idea how they work with Linux though.

> No idea how they work with Linux though. On the Surface Pro 1 you can forget using the pen input and sometimes the wifi will just disconnect until you reboot. Aside from that Linux will run pretty smoothly. From what I've read so far I get the impression it works better on the newer models though(SP3 and up).

Many Linux distros don't seem to support display scaling (Ubuntu in particular), so the Surface Pro's high resolution display makes for tiny text. There are some work-arounds like setting custom font sizes, but none that work well.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#76

Post by martin-adams »

I don't think the remote workstation idea is a bad idea. For me, in order to be a proper development machine it would need to have a fully local IDE with a remote terminal so I can run docker, test cases, database commands, etc.

The VSCode Docker image recently discussed is a huge next step if the input and scroll were to be fixed.

I used to use the dev version of cloud 9 on my VMs and code in the browser. It worked really, really well. Getting that right for the iPad would be quite exciting.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#77

Post by soganess »

There needs to be something along the lines of the iron law of wages, but for developer machines. Something like:

"If you are unable to run the tools needed to further create software on the machine itself, then said machine cannot be considered a developer machine."

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#78

Post by blinkingled »

nightfly wrote: post #18
blinkingled wrote: post #7

This falls under fetish category. Steve Jobs' Post PC world analogy was off in that PCs are the cars, trucks, convertibles etc. and tablets are the scooter. Yes you can do all your grocery shopping on the scooter given the groceries fit, the shop isn't too far away, it's not raining, the mileage will be good etc - you making that one successful grocery trip doesn't mean scooter is a car replacement.

That analogy works pretty good: For many people a scooter is all they need for day-to-day life, and when they need car they borrow/rent one.

The 'many' part is questionable - some sure. But yes scooter analogy works better than the original! (9.5 million scooters and motorcycles sold in 2017 in ASEAN region where they are most popular - vs 80M cars globally.)

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#79

Post by computerex »

melq wrote: post #25
laurentdc wrote: post #8

This topic comes up every month or so, and there's always this catch: > we need to first create a remote workstation which we can start using as our main development machine. A dumb terminal isn't a development machine. That's like saying "Using my DEC VT100 terminal to develop in Go", let me just hook it up to an actual computer

This is not a very good argument. I do my development work on my company issued macbook, but its not like I'm doing my work locally. My several thousand dollar macbook pro acts as a terminal interface for me for a HUGE proportion of my work. All my code is developed/built/run/tested on remote machines and my laptop is just a fancy interface to them.

It all depends on the type of work you do. I work on the latest top of the line macbook pro issued by work as well, and for me it's too slow. Running the company's php app along with all the other dependencies like MySQL/Redis/etc takes a significant amount of resources. All development is done locally on the dev laptops, bugs are reproduced and fixed on local dev laptops. At this point I almost wish that my laptop was a terminal so that I could have access to more resources like RAM (currently at 16 GB).

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#80

Post by seppin »

BonesJustice wrote: post #48
jwr wrote: post #5

I get excited every time I see an article about using the iPad Pro for development. But then it always turns out that people just use blink to ssh/mosh into another machine. I really wish I could have native Emacs on the iPad. It is one of the fastest and lightest machines around, phenomenally lightweight and with a great battery life. It has a pretty good keyboard attachment. And Emacs even without a native shell wo…

Wouldn’t the locked-down filesystem be a problem?

In more ways than one, yes.
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