TLDR (quoting the article which I think buries the lede): "Obviously, there is no way to develop on an iPad Pro."
iPad Pro as Development Machine
91–100 of 151 posts
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 w…
Exactly the reason why we've started setting up remote (in-house) servers for devs - for the cost of the latest MBP you can buy a server machine with tons of ram that will run all you services super smooth with any old laptop that can run your editor.
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#93Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#94Everyone is so defensive about laptops here that you’d think they feel threatened by this post. Isn’t it in the spirit of the hacker community to be open to new modes of using computers? This is an experiment, that’s why they documented it and stated clearly that it’s an experiment. It’s something to think about and discuss, not a statement that you should throw your laptop out.
If I'm "defensive", it's about ensuring a market for devices that are controlled by the user rather than a central authority. I'm all for investigating new form factors; personally I'm hoping for an unobtrusive heads-up display that can replicate an HD display anywhere. But I'm strongly opposed to abandoning computing freedom in such a transition.
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#95This 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.
I'm a scooter owner, and your comment made me fill my one gallon gas tank with tears.
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#96This 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
Agreed. I would be interested in seeing Samsung DeX reviewed for development as DeX can run regular Ubuntu.
This is nice, can it also run it without any extra stuff attached? I assume it will only run ARM software?
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#97This 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.
I'd say your own analogy is a little off too. PCs are more of the commercial vehicles: semi trucks, tractors, and industrial equipment. They're mostly used by professionals doing work in some way (also in education and gaming). Mobile phones are the cars - for the average person, most of their interaction with technology is through their smartphone, and for most people, other computing devices aren't really necessary…
And servers are trains and planes :)
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are worried of a "war on general purpose computing" scenario if even development work can be moved to locked down devices, I think
Phones have completely replaced the use case of PCs for most people, we've accidentally reached a point where it's normal to grow up without a PC in the house. A friend of mine is a university tutor and complained about students showing up to work with only their phones. A growing-fraction of people are even writing long essays using only google docs on their phone (without even a bluetooth keyboard).
People who use phones instead of PC are handicapped on ways they may not even notice. People who have PCs notice the plunge in personal productivity when they try to do all their activities with a 5% size screen and typing with 20% of their fingers
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#99I didn't like that it was a long article, and the author ended saying effectively “nope.”
With fine iPad native IDEs for Haskell and Python, some local development is possible. In the future with using the USB-C port to dock to monitor and keyboard, then we get a little closer to a “not nope” answer to the author’s question.
Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine
#100I've been using an iPad Pro (2018 12.9") as my main/only computer for 2 months on a sort of vacation. With the Apple Pencil 2, a detached bluetooth keyboard (because it's sometimes easier to keep it to the side instead of front, especially when working with the Pencil) and the Smart Folio to keep it upright.
It's generally surprisingly capable for a vast number of tasks, and I love using this in bed/on the couch/outdoors more than a laptop, but iOS remains the biggest hurdle. Too many limitations and quirks, and it's frustrating that you have to wait for a year at a time to receive any major changes.
I even tried brainstorming some coding ideas in Swift Playgrounds, but gods it's terrible for that. You can't even really `print` some simple output without awkward UI fumbling as there doesn't seem to be a "console" window without creating views.