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Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

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Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#161
post #90

In developing countries like India - a surprisingly high number of students do not have access to a computer. I have a lot of friends who had to learn enough on phone to bootstrap into buying their first laptop. One of my best friend - in his village in the hills they did not have electricity but the government had sent a PC. No one was allowed to go close to it but that was the very thing that inspired him to learn…

Thats true most people in Pakistan don't own a laptop and don't ever intend to buy one. It makes me irrationally angry when people are buying flight tickets on the phone even though having access to a laptop.

I buy flight and other tickets on the phone all the time. Autofill for CC details, quick access to PayPal and other things are all there. One swipe away.

Transport and booking apps (Airbnb, etc) are all pretty decent and similar to the speed on a laptop. But I can do that while walking the dog, while on the bus, and many other situations where I’m not at a proper computer.

Elder millennial (1982), so it’s not just a young people thing.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#162

I been writing programs for over 50 years and I shuddered at the thought of doing it on a phone. My first thought, he must be a masochist. Then I thought he might not had anything better to work on. I'm a touch typist who doesn't need to look at the keyboard why typing. Given my cataracts and tiny screen and tiny keyboard, it is torture to type on my phone.

Strange, any phone today would be better than most hardware we had 30 yrs ago. In the 90's I had monitors with resolutions of 320x240, limited info on the screen. Things were slow. If you gave me the option of using a phone from today or a computer from then, back then and today, I'll definitely pick the phone. We don't code at the speed of thought, we poke at the computer one key at a time, one register at a time.

I wrote code with a cheap logitech keyboard and a phone. The keyboard keeps phone upright. The screen is enough for text. But touchscreen for typing? nope thanks give me a 30 yr old computer

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#163

We are doing a fundraiser for him to get a laptop here: https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/oxy2dev-laptop Transparent ledger of donations: https://hcb.hackclub.com/oxy2dev-laptop/transactions We need about $500 more USD to get him an M1 MacBook Air (they are more expensive in Bangladesh, where he is based). GitHub thread with details: https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/218 . Here is a Reddit commen…

Why a MacBook, out of curiosity?

I had a talk with him and it seemed like the best fit. In the end, MacBooks are the best use of money when in comes to laptop. Battery life is crucial due to frequent blackouts.

I'd have preferred something from new Intel ones but I couldn't find anything available there.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#164

I been writing programs for over 50 years and I shuddered at the thought of doing it on a phone. My first thought, he must be a masochist. Then I thought he might not had anything better to work on. I'm a touch typist who doesn't need to look at the keyboard why typing. Given my cataracts and tiny screen and tiny keyboard, it is torture to type on my phone.

Strange, any phone today would be better than most hardware we had 30 yrs ago. In the 90's I had monitors with resolutions of 320x240, limited info on the screen. Things were slow. If you gave me the option of using a phone from today or a computer from then, back then and today, I'll definitely pick the phone. We don't code at the speed of thought, we poke at the computer one key at a time, one register at a time.

Not about the speed, it's about the comfort for me. And 30 years ago would be the mid 90s so most people had 14 inch monitors that supported 640x480 or even SVGA at 800 x 600 with ease.

To me, it doesn't matter how many pixels your phone is displaying when you're limited to a whopping 6 inch diagonal.

And I can't even imagine torturously attempting to touch type on the phones keyboard (which is displacing even more of your limited phone screen), versus a dedicated mechanical keyboard which was also common at the time.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#165
I'm also doing that but to develop side projects instead of playing games or reading news, it's an effective way to spent in transit / before sleeping, waiting on lines, in boring talks etc etc

I'm using Keep notes - for crafting the issues and bugs I want to fix, reshaping the solution ChatGPT - Copy shortcuts - I'm able to copy various parts of the application and sent to ChatGPT (file path, code...) and then after the code I'm writing my plans. asking to tell what to change Neovim - with many great shortcuts to make life easier, copying and pasting specific parts, quick save, run python scripts, the tree navigation and search is awesome, git plugins as well Fastapi & Vue - I'm running on my phone the Web app and debugging it with pdb Kiwi browser - has great debug tools Termux of course Git - pushing to a repo and it's being deployed to vercel it's great when I find small bugs in the app when I'm using it, i can fix it right away without opening laptop

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#166
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use a special keyboard app too, or just the default one?

Just the default one. I tried some alternative keyboards and they are better in some ways but in the end the default keyboard was enough. Termius provides input of some special keys (e.g. Ctrl, Alt, Esc, Tab, Home, End) so that's another reason why the default keyboard is enough.

Just FYI, this goes for all Android users. I believe iPhone has similar capabilities but I have never tried myself.

Your phone likely accepts a physical keyboard. I have a USB-C input, but can use a travel dongle (female USB-C device accepting USB-A) to attach.

I used this a few times to do some very light work when travelling. A good setup is picking up a cheap bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo and using the female input to get both. Many alternatives to this too, e.g. you can also attach a dock to your phone to get all devices your phone has the hardware to accept, and you'd be surprised what it does accept.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#168

We are doing a fundraiser for him to get a laptop here: https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/oxy2dev-laptop Transparent ledger of donations: https://hcb.hackclub.com/oxy2dev-laptop/transactions We need about $500 more USD to get him an M1 MacBook Air (they are more expensive in Bangladesh, where he is based). GitHub thread with details: https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/218 . Here is a Reddit commen…

If it would be less trouble (because of customs and other external factors), and assuming it can help, maybe a phone keyboard can also be considered? An OTG cable plus a normal USB keyboard might also be a solution if portability is not a requirement.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We work exclusively on remote VMs that have no internet access. Well writing the stuff is fine through PuTTY (with tmux+vim), some other guys use RDP with VSCode but it is extremely laggy and I hate it. Some tasks can be annoying. $job before that I would remotely connect to clients machines through various ways. Most would be a webpage with some terminal emulation in JS, or some web-based RDP (to a Linux or a Window…

> We work exclusively on remote VMs that have no internet access. Is this some kind of developer dominatrix fetish or something where people get off punishing themselves. “You’ve been a bad boy! You used AI! No Internet for you”

We can use any AI we want but only on our work laptop. The work laptop cannot install any useful dev tool so we connect to the remote machine for any code write/build/execution, and if needed copy/paste anything we find online or from an llm.

So work laptop has internet, dev machine doesn't. Dev machine has access to some nexus repository (some are proxies to the internet like pip, maven-central, nodejs, some rpm like EPEL, etc) and can actually run code (laptop doesn't, lots of windows "security" stuff activated that require signing the code for every edit).

I think they call it "security" or something like that. They pay reasonnably well and working hours window is reasonnably small so at this point I don't care anymore. At least I avoid the cloud "cool kids" crowd where everything has to be the absolutely latest tech and nobody really knows why everything is re-written every 6 months.

Re: Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and touchscreen

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why a MacBook, out of curiosity?

I had a talk with him and it seemed like the best fit. In the end, MacBooks are the best use of money when in comes to laptop. Battery life is crucial due to frequent blackouts. I'd have preferred something from new Intel ones but I couldn't find anything available there.

Not sure I agree. They are built to last, yes, but would be a pain to get fixed if they break down. If it were me, I'd have preferred something like a Thinkpad.
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