Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The iPad Pro as main computer for a programmer

jann.is

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 21 posts

Re: The iPad Pro as main computer for a programmer

#2

Post by stfwn »

After I returned a MBP ‘17 (twice) because of the horrible keyboard I also switched to an iPad. I’m still a student so all I need to do is write code in an editor and SSH into my Mac or Pi to compile/run it. It works great, and it’s a huge step up from my non-retina MBP that’s now a desktop computer.

The only two things I have not been able to replace is (yup..) the proprietary Xcode for the occasional venture into iOS development, and oddly enough: Sketch. You’d expect that the iPad is the perfect device for a Sketch-type app (bar 3rd-party plugins..), but nothing ticks all the boxes just yet.

An interesting advantage of iOS that I find is the focus gained. It feels as though switching to a different app requires more deliberate thought than on macOS. I used to do 9 things at once and completely lose my train of thought in all of them and I have less of that on iOS. Or I suffer from Stockholm’s Syndrome, that could also be it.

Re: The iPad Pro as main computer for a programmer

#6

Post by mvdwoord »

EvanKnowles wrote: post #3

And running stuff on a server? So the iPad Pro, as an interface to the main computer?

Yeah, if I run everything somewhere else, open my macbook and just SSH in there, guess what? Thing does not get warm, battery life is awesome, I can plug in a bunch of perihperals, and whenever I am completely voided of connectivity for a longer period I actually CAN work properly on the local machine.

Is this some sort of guerilla marketing for the iPad?

Re: The iPad Pro as main computer for a programmer

#9

Post by nunez »

I did this as well last year: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4db0ce/so_i_used_the...

I thought it was going to be perfect since it's much lighter and thinner than a Surface Pro 4.

You need a remote server for this to work, since you won't get access to the underlying shell without jailbreaking. Depending on reliable networks was mistake #1.

Also, while Panic was a good enough terminal emulator, its redrawing was unreliable when switching from app to app. This might have changed with iOS 11, but it bugged me to no end before.

Lastly, I learned that much of the web (and some apps in particular, namely Remote Desktop) still thinks that you have a mouse. I used Cloudcraft when it first came out to draw some diagrams for an interview. I straight-up could not do it without a mouse, and iOS (stubbornly) does not support mousing. This on top of buggy CMD+TAB functionality and some apps straight up not working without a mouse ended the experiment for me.

Post reply on HN