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Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

andrewbrookins.com

151–160 of 196 posts

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#151

This is the reason I ditched the iPad for a Surface. Windows isn't my preferred environment but the ability to run my normal tools (IDEs, command line tools, etc) really was a game changer. iPad Pro is great for creative workflows, but it's a shame it leaves programmers in the dust. It would be really great even to see something like XCode come to iOS

I own a Surface device, an iPad Pro, and a Macbook Pro. While I write code on all of them, macOS is still the king of development environments. On macOS, you can just work. That's what the end goal should be in other platforms. I doubt iOS will ever get there. I mean, how are you supposed to copy and paste code from Vim running in tmux inside of Blink? With your finger? Hell's bells! Windows is just too weird. If you…

For python and go why use WSL or a VM or an Xserver at all? Install the mingw tools and use native builds of everything with the native window manager. You can use a VM to test cross OS compatibility at the end.

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#152
post #99

I've crossed Europe and Russia by train while receiving emails and calls from work (from Brazil) during 50 days and the only machine I had was a 2017 10'5 iPad Pro. I've ditched the laptop because of how light it was and also the fact that it could connect to cellular networks with a SIM card. So I had a browser, Slack, Fortinet VPN, ProtonMail client, Shelly SSH client, Textastic and Working copy (git), TeamViewer,…

> and also the fact that it could connect to cellular networks with a SIM card I never actually understood that. Everyone carries a cellphone, can't you just do tethering? that's what I do anyways. I guess the only advantage of an iPad with SIM is that is 'always connected' as opposed to click and connect to your mobile hotspot?

Isn't one of the advantages of having a tablet that you can skip the smart phone and get a feature phone with a two-week batterly life instead?

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#153

I'm struggling to work out why anyone would want to do this. Leaving aside the other concerns, I personally find input via touchscreen pretty painful and can't imagine being able to program at any real speed. It's entirely possible I'm missing something though!

> I personally find input via touchscreen pretty painful and can't imagine being able to program at any real speed With Logitech Create Pro keyboard on iPad 12.9, it is comparable to a laptop. 4:3 HiDPI screen has more vertical space than 16:9 laptops. Arm processor means instant on, long battery life, fanless/silent, fast charging and never gets hot in your lap. The web browser is faster (by feel and benchmark) than…

I think the parent means that x86 devices, specifically a favorite of mine, the Surface Pro, can provide mostly all of that and then some, but without the hassle of iOS:

* 3:2 screen ratio, 267 PPI

* Despite an i5 it has instant on, connected standby, LTE built in

* 9h of web browsing on battery: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13471/the-microsoft-surface-p...

* Fanless

* Charges in 2h40m

* Does not get hot

* Can run everything from games to servers to IDEs to scripts

* Not a walled garden

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#154
post #106

This seems like an exercise in masochism. Why would you want to code on an OS targeted for smartphones and without any native compiler support? To those who want LTE connectivity, I don't think you know there's a device called the Thinkpad X1 with this functionality built in. Or is it that coding on tablets is considered "hip" these days?

Sidebar - why do people even want built in LTE? It makes no sense to me when tethering is so fast, convenient, and doesn’t require an extra bill!

I would say energy wise

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally find input via touchscreen pretty painful and can't imagine being able to program at any real speed With Logitech Create Pro keyboard on iPad 12.9, it is comparable to a laptop. 4:3 HiDPI screen has more vertical space than 16:9 laptops. Arm processor means instant on, long battery life, fanless/silent, fast charging and never gets hot in your lap. The web browser is faster (by feel and benchmark) than…

I think the parent means that x86 devices, specifically a favorite of mine, the Surface Pro, can provide mostly all of that and then some, but without the hassle of iOS: * 3:2 screen ratio, 267 PPI * Despite an i5 it has instant on, connected standby, LTE built in * 9h of web browsing on battery: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13471/the-microsoft-surface-p... * Fanless * Charges in 2h40m * Does not get hot * Can run…

Do you know if it can run Windows 10 LTSB? The telemetry on regular Windows 10 is a deterrent.

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and also the fact that it could connect to cellular networks with a SIM card I never actually understood that. Everyone carries a cellphone, can't you just do tethering? that's what I do anyways. I guess the only advantage of an iPad with SIM is that is 'always connected' as opposed to click and connect to your mobile hotspot?

Tethering drains the phone battery very fast, and your phone is usually the one thing that you want to die last on you. But there are plenty of laptops with integrated SIM card slot and modem, and the rest of them can be extended with the same via USB.

just buy a 20k mAh battery and you're off to the races, nowadays these can charge your phone and laptop at the same time(usb c PD enabled)

if you say you don't WANT to carry another thing then your assertion fails - either you need a full working environ on the go or you don't. tethering with a mobile phone and laptop provides a mobile work environ with no drawbacks at all

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#157

For those of us married to emacs: I would love to know if anyone has succeeded in using SSH on an iPadPro with a sensible mapping of the keyboard. Every SSH I tried had some intercept of control sequences, which was fatal as far as I was concerned. This was at least couple of years ago, so perhaps there's been progress. So far, the only usable iPadPro emacs is via uVNC to a graphical remote machine, which does seem t…

Why is everyone in this thread ignoring Android tablets? There are ports for most command line apps, including Emacs. Try Termux.

I had the same thought.

To give an example and add some context: just last week I thought of a possible bug and gap in the test coverage for a personal project. Within a Zsh prompt, I pulled the latest revision from Bitbucket using Mercurial, used Emacs (via the Hacker's Keyboard [1] soft keyboard) to edit the test suite and add a couple of lines, then used CMake to generate a makefile for GNU Make to build the project using Clang, and finally ran the test suite and confirmed the expected segfault.

All of this was done locally (except for the pull, obviously) from within a Termux [2] session on a sub-$300 Android phone. Granted, the full test suite takes about 14x longer to run on my phone compared to my aging desktop and it's tedious to type very much, but as the old saying goes: "The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all."

[1] https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard

[2] https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page, http://termux.net/dists/stable/main/binary-arm/

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#158

Programming is not just about programming tools, it is about the OS environment. I prefer being able to arrange things anywhere , and the iPad has always bugged me by rationing shared-app screen space as if I’m a child (you get up to this fraction of the screen but it must be arranged only “here” ; or, you can picture-in-picture but only the specified way; etc.). My first iPad was wonderful for web browsing until web…

apple devices optimise for a mobile experience even on devices that have laptop like capabilities. looking at iOS on the latest iPad genuinely feels painful. if only Apple would consider the idea of porting macOS apps to iOS instead of the other way around

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attempted to use an iPad pro as a primary device for a few weeks. It seemed to be more than just the user agent. Things were rendered wrong, it seems some browser defaults we're also different so if the site developers assumed they were there, it looked funny. Switching to "request desktop site" wasn't always a solution

I hope I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're arguing against responsive webdesign. Any decent website should look exactly the same on the iPad and a desktop window of equal size. If it doesn't, the developer rather than the browser is to blame.

the problem is that most websites want things to look "exactly" a certain way and use responsive to hit you with this jackboot. it is genuinely painful to use some sites like reddit nowadays coz of the wasted space

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#160
post #75

I want a touch first drag and drop editor

many tried, many failed. even apple themselves couldn't get users to adopt 3D touch after multiple years of very expensive engineering. probably going to be removed from iOS devices next year.

your finger has 3 articulation points, your hand has 5 fingers. the touch interface uses maybe two points out of all this complicated mechanism - it's fundamentally frustrating to use. it's fine for when a phone is cradled precariously on your palm/little finger but an iPad instantly makes you think "why can't i have a mouse or something"

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