Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019 • Hacker News Board

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#91

Post by kitsunesoba » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:19 AM UTC

graeme wrote: post #83

kitsunesoba wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fairly easily worked around for sites that look at the user agent — just build a browser app around WKWebView and set its user agent to that of desktop Safari, and boom, you’ve got desktop versions of most sites. There are a few that judge which version to deliver based on screen resolution + OS, but this can sometimes be worked around by injecting some JS to force use of desktop stylesheets. There’s probably…

Icab mobile does this. It's good. The problem is, safari is better for a lot of things, and also has native adblocker integration. Would be better to be able to designate a desktop user agent in safari as well.

WKWebViews support the same JSON content blocking lists that Safari uses for its content blocking extensions, so while you can’t support the same extensions as Safari you could at least bundle block lists with the app.

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#92

Post by michaelmrose » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:21 AM UTC

zozbot123 wrote: post #51

akerl_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say coding using just a touchscreen would be terrible, but keep in mind that tablets aren't limited to just the touchscreen. In fact, you can plug a full-sized mechanical keyboard into an iPad (though the more common keyboard is likely the smartcover.

> I'd say coding using just a touchscreen would be terrible Text-based coding, sure. But the jury is still out for visual programming systems, of either the Scratch (syntax expressed via custom "puzzle pieces") or the LabVIEW (flow-based semantics) kind.

How is the jury still out given that nobody uses anything like this for anything real beyond learning and labview dates back to 1983 and scratch to the early 2000s.

Language is the means by which human beings describe abstract data in a dense concise easy to encode and decode fashion. This is true whether its spoken or written. That it is the means we express code is unsurprising.

Lets put it another way. I'm typing this response to you on a keyboard. Can you imagine a way via drawing a picture that I could have in moments conveyed these thoughts by drawing you a picture?

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#93

Post by colordrops » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:23 AM UTC

jpmattia wrote: post #79

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.

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#94

Post by lh7777 » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

ddoolin wrote: post #55

cageface wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything it feels like it's becoming clear that iOS is not going to be a viable OSX replacement for most professional use cases without a huge bump up in complexity. At which point you have to wonder why bother with it at all? Microsoft seems to have a much clearer vision here and anecdotally I know quite a few people that have been Mac users for ages that have given up on iPads and bought Surface devices because…

I actually agree with you and others pitching Microsoft products as a better replacement for this sort of thing, for sure. I use the iPad Pro because I already had it, having purchased it for a different reason entirely. My only gripe with a Surface product would be the Windows part of it, which isn't THAT bad and like you said, they have a pretty clear vision for the future of it.

I switched from a MacBook to a Surface Pro (i5) maybe a year ago and just finished switching back to the same MacBook. I agree that Microsoft's vision for pro users is much clearer than Apple's, which is why I switched in the first place. The Surface hardware is solid for the most part, the Surface Dock is great, the pen is occasionally useful, and I really like being able to rip off the keyboard and use it as a tablet for reading instead of carrying another device. But between missing the craftsmanship of indie Mac apps and putting up with the general flakiness of Windows, I finally gave up on the Surface. Now maybe it would've helped if I got the i7 Surface (& 16 gb RAM) and just put up with the resulting fan noise (or went with the Surface Book instead), but I think it says something about the state of Windows that my 1.3 GHz Core M MacBook is smoother and more reliable than a Surface Pro that's 3 years newer and has double the clock speed.

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#95

Post by dboreham » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #92

zozbot123 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say coding using just a touchscreen would be terrible Text-based coding, sure. But the jury is still out for visual programming systems, of either the Scratch (syntax expressed via custom "puzzle pieces") or the LabVIEW (flow-based semantics) kind.

How is the jury still out given that nobody uses anything like this for anything real beyond learning and labview dates back to 1983 and scratch to the early 2000s. Language is the means by which human beings describe abstract data in a dense concise easy to encode and decode fashion. This is true whether its spoken or written. That it is the means we express code is unsurprising. Lets put it another way. I'm typing…

See figure 1?

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#96

Post by wnevets » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:30 AM UTC

0xADEADBEE wrote: post #12

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'm struggling to work out why anyone would want to do this.

The same reasons why ipads are always shoe horned into a role beyond content consumption.

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#97

Post by briandear » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:40 AM UTC

reustle wrote: post #68

FPGAhacker wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s missing?

It is the iOS version of Safari instead of the desktop version. Sites often opt for showing the mobile version.

Why are user agents used at all? Isn’t responsive supposed to end all of that?

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#98

Post by briandear » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

cageface wrote: post #43

delinka wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hammers, nails, and screws a pretty much set. They're not changing regularly. An iPad becoming a laptop-replacement is happening - its progress is debatable, but it's definitely changing on each iteration.

If anything it feels like it's becoming clear that iOS is not going to be a viable OSX replacement for most professional use cases without a huge bump up in complexity. At which point you have to wonder why bother with it at all? Microsoft seems to have a much clearer vision here and anecdotally I know quite a few people that have been Mac users for ages that have given up on iPads and bought Surface devices because…

> real work?

What’s real work?

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#99

Post by ulzeraj » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:48 AM UTC

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, RealVNC and the Microsoft RDP client along with some network debugging tools (ping, whois, traceroute etc). I didn't needed any more than that.

Negative points about this experience:

My keyboard (logicool) didn't had an escape key having a home button on the place of esc. I consider this beyond retarded. Also for some retarded reason cellular functions like sending and receiving SMS is disabled even while using a SIM card.

Re: Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

#100

Post by threeseed » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 4:49 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #73

zozbot123 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say coding using just a touchscreen would be terrible Text-based coding, sure. But the jury is still out for visual programming systems, of either the Scratch (syntax expressed via custom "puzzle pieces") or the LabVIEW (flow-based semantics) kind.

> But the jury is still out for visual programming systems How many more decades of failure do we need before we decide the jury is in and visual programming is a dead end?

There are actually a number of highly successful visual programming tools. They are just hidden underneath the veneer of something else.

https://www.alteryx.com/products/alteryx-platform/alteryx-de...