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iPad Pro as Development Machine

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Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#131

Post by blub »

computerex wrote: post #79
melq wrote: post #25

Earlier 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…

32GB of RAM is top for the MBP, not 16.

Edit: OP said he had the latest top of the line. Latest, top of the line has 32.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#132

Post by jasonvorhe »

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

The device you're developing with is a developer machine. There's even people working on Citrix remote desktop Windows systems who have nothing but a thin client who develop software as their daily business. Who cares if you're building your application locally or somewhere remotely.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#133

Post by rcarmo »

I have been using a similar setup for a while (I use Ansible and Azure ARM templates to provision my remote machine), and it’s pretty usable for back-end development if you’re used to vim+tmux.

It’s not a mainstream solution, though, and for other kinds of development I’ve found that Jump Desktop and the Citrix X1 mouse (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/06/1930) are a great alternative—I can VNC or RDP to a Remote Desktop via an SSH tunnel and run literally anything (mostly VSCode and Firefox).

Doing fully local development with the likes of Working Copy and Textastic is also quite feasible (at least for back-end stuff), but it’s always a pain to test and compile stuff.

Things are getting better (https://github.com/holzschu/Carnets lets you run Jupyter notebooks locally, which is awesome), but we’re not quite there yet.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#134

Post by jasonvorhe »

elagost wrote: post #84

These articles are always hilarious. The way most people use iPads as 'dev machines' could be just as easily configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy and a copy of PuTTY. (Or, buying any not-broken laptop from Craigslist for $50 and saving yourself $1100.) Granted, as a sysadmin, most of my job could be done on an iPad too (SSH, RDP, web browser, and messaging applications), but every few days I need USB, Serial…

And still, they're happy to pay extra for great software, regular software updates, a big ecosystem, the best displays on the market and a fit and finish that no one has yet reached completely.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#135

Post by bdefore »

vonseel wrote: post #127
nightfly wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your comment reminds me that (AFAIK) there aren’t really great rental sources for many pieces of gear. I have often wished something like this existed, and not even for computers (considering I am a dev and have a MBP). But, it would be nice to be able to rent a high end tool that you may only need for one small project, or a high end piece of music gear - like a $2,000 microphone, or guitar amp, etc. - from a well-k…

There have been a few companies trying to fill the need you speak of. Two that I'm aware of https://fatllama.com and https://www.beomni.com. I believe the latter is currently only in San Francisco.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#136

Post by pjmlp »

blub wrote: post #131
computerex wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

32GB of RAM is top for the MBP, not 16. Edit: OP said he had the latest top of the line. Latest, top of the line has 32.

Only for the new models.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#137

Post by elagost »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #134
elagost wrote: post #84

These articles are always hilarious. The way most people use iPads as 'dev machines' could be just as easily configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy and a copy of PuTTY. (Or, buying any not-broken laptop from Craigslist for $50 and saving yourself $1100.) Granted, as a sysadmin, most of my job could be done on an iPad too (SSH, RDP, web browser, and messaging applications), but every few days I need USB, Serial…

And still, they're happy to pay extra for great software, regular software updates, a big ecosystem, the best displays on the market and a fit and finish that no one has yet reached completely.

There's no bigger software ecosystem than a laptop running Windows that can be converted into a laptop running a Linux distro.

But, you've got me on the 'best displays' portion. I think the iPads have 120hz displays? They're amazing and threre's nothing like them. They most certainly are "all that", but despite having the opportunity and the spare cash, I still prefer the trashy, ghosting, dim, low-rez display that I have attached to a real laptop.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#138

Post by elagost »

Terretta wrote: post #106
elagost wrote: post #84

These articles are always hilarious. The way most people use iPads as 'dev machines' could be just as easily configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy and a copy of PuTTY. (Or, buying any not-broken laptop from Craigslist for $50 and saving yourself $1100.) Granted, as a sysadmin, most of my job could be done on an iPad too (SSH, RDP, web browser, and messaging applications), but every few days I need USB, Serial…

> could be just as easily configured using a $199 netbook from Best Buy Except then when not using PuTTY, you aren’t able to use it as an iPad.

Another incredibly good point. Tablets are great at things like watching videos, reading comics, and if you're not doing any typing, are really good 'couch computers'. Rotating the display provides a whole new set of functionality that you just can't get on a laptop, where it's incredibly awkward to do so.

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#139

Post by cyberpunk »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #83
cyberpunk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a proper desktop when working from home, and an iPad Pro with blink+mosh+tmux to a chunky server when I'm on the move and to be honest I have no problem at all with the keyboard (only nit -- after a day or three heavy use it sometimes takes me a while to stop hitting capslock for escape on my regular keyboard when I'm home) -- What's your problem with it? Edit: Hitting the little... "world" key is sometimes qui…

> (only nit -- after a day or three heavy use it sometimes takes me a while to stop hitting capslock for escape on my regular keyboard when I'm home) Why don't you rebind your Caps Lock to Esc? For Windows there's uncap ;" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/susam/uncap>; on Linux you can find it in your KDE/Gnome settings or look at the uncap Github page for other methods. Or if you do use the Caps Lock key frequently…

I just never got around to it. I have a .xmodmap somewhere which will probably do the trick. I'm using OpenBSD on the desktop :)

Re: iPad Pro as Development Machine

#140

Post by pjmlp »

krn wrote: post #65

Why would anyone use iPod Pro as a development machine, when Google Pixelbook is of a similar weight, size, power and price, and comes with a standard keyboard and a native Linux support built-in? Tablets are for consumption, not creation.

Maybe because Pixelbook is on its way out.

In any case I do agree, only 2-1 and laptops are viable propositions for coding on the go.

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