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Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

technicallychallenged.substack.com

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Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#61

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

warning26 wrote: post #4

I have the iPad Air with the same M1 chip and it’s such a disappointment for this exact reason. It literally has the same SoC as my MacBook, but is basically useless for most productive activities I’d like to do with it. (And even goes slower at the tasks it can do!) It really highlights just how awful iPadOS is compared to MacOS.

> And even goes slower at the tasks it can do!

Curious, is that with Apple's own apps or third-party ones? Or is this specifically because of how iPad-based workflows work?

The 3rd-party apps often come with SDKs which phone home just to initialize, that's where big startup times come from usually.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#62

Post by DennisAleynikov »

galkk wrote: post #54
DennisAleynikov wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you can visit a website" okay my smart toaster is an excellent dev machine as well I'm looking for something like swift playgrounds++ so baby xcode, not a remote window

You either trolling or have no idea what you're talking about. Hosted vscode is just vscode. You can use it to run remote terminal, just as ssh and run commands there or launch/debug code, set breakpoints etc from ui etc. At Google most of new hires are working on cloud machines now by default, with either vscode/remote or internal web-based editor. Your toaster doesn't have amount of CPUs/RAM/disk space that you can…

I use both hosted VSCode, Codespace as well as other web based software.

I also program from smart fridges, toasters and random garbage (for my own entertainment) because basically anything can open vscode.dev login to github and use a terminal.

saying "b-but my ipad can code" is insane if the definition of code is opening a browser. I can't believe I have to explain such a basic concept to an adult

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#63

Post by dwaite »

behnamoh wrote: post #53
wlesieutre wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If apps are still handling files that way instead of being able to open documents from anywhere in your local files, iCloud Drive, it’s on the developer. Hasn’t been the case for years that this is the way files work, you should be able to save them to your Downloads folder (or elsewhere) and open them in whichever app you want. Give PDF Viewer a look if you want better file handling: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pd…

That further proves my point about iOS/iPadOS's limitations. Why can't files be handled like on Linux/Windows/Android/macOS/etc. without having to use iCloud? Edit: Goodnotes and Notability also have this annoyance.

You don't have to use iCloud. You can use local storage, or any cloud provider, or SMB/CIFS.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#64

Post by anon373839 »

divbzero wrote: post #31

In my experience, iPad + keyboard works okay for coding if you SSH into a remote machine [1] and use a terminal-based text editor like emacs or vim. Alternatively, you can use a Git client [2] to code locally but that prevents you from using your preferred text editor or the command line. In theory, Visual Studio Code for the Web [3] could work too though I haven’t tried that approach personally. I first experimented…

Is it possible to do ssh tunneling in iOS? I haven’t tried to use my iDevices for any development tasks, but that would be a key threshold for me to find any utility in them.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#65

Post by olliej »

I'm obviously an apple first dev, but even I could see that this is an obvious outcome. The iOS is phone/tablet first, and everything else is very clearly and noticeably an add on (some things closer to the "hacked on" end of the spectrum). Expecting to code on an iPad, means expecting first class desktop/laptop style interaction.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#66

Post by tga »

mr_donk wrote: post #45

For me, the killer app for me has been sidecar… I work from home, and like to work outside in the summer. I’ve been using my MacBook Pro and my iPad as a second display via sidecar. One unadvertised feature of this is that you can use the pencil as a mouse on your Mac in this configuration, which is handy for virtual whiteboard type stuff on your Mac where you’d normally be stuck with a mouse.

That’s nice as a bonus, but an iPad is small and rather expensive to use primarily as a monitor — you can get a portable 15” touchscreen for €120.

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#67

Post by wudangmonk »

Ipad Pro was just a gimmick, hardware without the appropriate software is just a waste. You can't code with it at all, you can sort of draw a little bit but again the drawing sotfware and file management of a professional workflow just isn't there. Photos? same problem.

Honestly, what sort of professional work can this thing do?. I think apple is just cashing in on the 'Pro' named from their macbooks. Same thing will happen with the Vision 'Pro'

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#68

Post by weikju »

divbzero wrote: post #31

In my experience, iPad + keyboard works okay for coding if you SSH into a remote machine [1] and use a terminal-based text editor like emacs or vim. Alternatively, you can use a Git client [2] to code locally but that prevents you from using your preferred text editor or the command line. In theory, Visual Studio Code for the Web [3] could work too though I haven’t tried that approach personally. I first experimented…

There's also Blink [1] which includes a local shell (limited), ssh and mosh support, and comes with a local-first, but remote-dependent, vscode implementation. Works with vscode.dev, code-server (the coder.com and microsoft version), coder.com etc. Not free but a free TestFlight versions available if you accept to be a beta tester of sorts.

I've had moderate success using it, but overall the code-server experience has been a bit lacking, in part due to languages I use, in part due to lots of software still assuming a local-first development environment (code-server/coder.com help with this by e.g. proxying http ports in your dev environment). A real IDE/code editor running on a MacBook is still way superior.

[1] https://blink.sh

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#69

Post by jonasdoesthings »

divbzero wrote: post #31

In my experience, iPad + keyboard works okay for coding if you SSH into a remote machine [1] and use a terminal-based text editor like emacs or vim. Alternatively, you can use a Git client [2] to code locally but that prevents you from using your preferred text editor or the command line. In theory, Visual Studio Code for the Web [3] could work too though I haven’t tried that approach personally. I first experimented…

> In theory, Visual Studio Code for the Web

Yeah, it works okay. I've been using it with GitHub Codespaces[1] in the past, which is not only VSCode Web, but also allows you to run your code (and any terminal commands really) in GitHub's cloud.

You get 60 2-CPU-core hours for free each month, it comes in pretty handy if you just want to quickly code something on the go, and don't have a real laptop / PC available.

[1]: https://github.com/features/codespaces

Re: Buying an iPad Pro for coding was a mistake

#70

Post by DennisAleynikov »

fragmede wrote: post #56
p1necone wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say this but there's a lot of unreasonable people around. There's always someone who has cobbled together a workflow on an ipad for whatever they're doing relying on like 5 different commercial applications and a bunch of sacrifices just to approximate what they'd get if they just used a macbook/windows/linux instead. And when you try to point this out to them they get defensive and basically pull the "everyone i…

> 5 different commercial applications The horror! Somebody paid money for something!? If it works, and it costs a reasonable amount of money, it's nice to support the developer. Not all of us have to be cheapskates.

I think it just stings how much rentseeking is at every step to do the most basic things on ios. most other mature operating systems have open source alternative app store/repositories with free altrenatives (at the cost of some UI/UX quality you could argue)
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