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What do you mean you "cannot" code on tablets and smartphones? There are nice interpreters and compilers in the official app stores for major mobiles OS, aren't

What do you mean you "cannot" code on tablets and smartphones? There are nice interpreters and compilers in the official app stores for major mobiles OS, aren't there? I've used Python on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Also J, Ocaml, some dialects of Lisp, C# and Ruby, that I can remember now (each language on at least one of those OSes, sometimes more than one). Not to mention these devices all come with web browsers which means at the very least you can use JavaScript (I've done at least one Project Euler question on an iPod Touch in CoffeeScript standing in line at the bank.) The tablet I currently own cost me $80 and came with a C# compiler preinstalled! (Maybe that's an extreme example: It is a Windows tablet, and Android or iOS only come with JavaScript JIT compilers preinstalled.)

lossolo 11y ago
I tried to code on smartphone, never again. I am x times more productive on desktop.
- omaranto 11y ago
  Absolutely! Programming is much more comfortable with a physical keyboard. I wasn't suggesting coding on a phone is ideal, just that it is possible.
- jshevek 11y ago
  Edit: Just realized you might have meant _on_ the phone as in 'using the on screen keyboard'. Ug. That would be truly awful. During one weekend in which my only options were android devices, I was pleasantly surprised by the packages available in termux. With tmux, git, and ssh installed, I mounted the tablet at the right height and connected a quality keyboard via usb. I actually forgot that I was coding on a tablet! The phone experience was far more sensitive to maintaining good posture throughout, but being strongly incentivized to keep good posture actually made the experience more pleasant in a way. However, this particular phone was around 1280x720 I believe - seeing individual pixels again, and being pixel-limited (not physical size limited) in the use of panes in tmux were the only facets I found truly unpleasant. I'm eager to try coding with a high res VR headset.
- onion2k 11y ago
  I've recently started using Termux on my phone with a bluetooth keyboard - I'm as productive as I would be doing dev over SSH. All the tools I'd use on a server are there (node, git, nano, etc). I've written a small API server with it and it wasn't a disaster. Admittedly I'm more productive when I'm on my laptop with Atom and a couple of monitors, but if that isn't an option I can still do work. It's a bonus rather than an alternative.
siscia 11y ago
Well of course you can technically code on a smartphone or tablets, I simply meant that is absolutely not practical.
userbinator 11y ago
Those are "second-class" or even "third-class" citizens in the ecosystem. Can you use those language interpreters and compilers to write apps that can interact with the system and exchange data with the other apps? That's what makes the traditional, document-centric, PC ecosystem so powerful. While being able to play around with Project Euler can be fun, it amounts to "I can run a Turing-machine simulator" and doesn't represent anything more than a tiny fraction of what people want to do with computers when they say they want to "code". You may as well be playing one of the numerous puzzle games that involve much of the same concepts. To use your iPod Touch as an example, if it were more like a traditional desktop computer, you would also be able to do things like write an app to manage your music playlists. The tablet I currently own cost me $80 and came with a C# compiler preinstalled! (Maybe that's an extreme example: It is a Windows tablet, and Android or iOS only come with JavaScript JIT compilers preinstalled.) Not surprising if it's a Windows tablet based on the PC architecture - those are far closer to the traditional desktop than iDevices and Androids. If by C# compiler you're referring to the one that comes with the .NET framework, that's been there since the first versions; pity it's not so well known with MS trying to push VS as hard as possible...
- Sephr 11y ago
  > Can you use those language interpreters and compilers to write apps that can interact with the system and exchange data with the other apps? Yes, you can. See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui
interfixus 11y ago
You can code on a tablet, same way as you can stand in line at the bank. Neither is very efficient, and most of us would rather not.
- interfixus 11y ago
  Apparently, you can't really do anything on a tablet or phone. Or at least I can't. My phone app chose this particular comment as a nice time to play up and do a double posting. Hence the copy further down, which I am not allowed to delete.
interfixus 11y ago
You can code on a tablet, same way as you can stand in line at the bank. Neither is very efficient, and most of us would rather not.

lossolo 11y ago

I tried to code on smartphone, never again. I am x times more productive on desktop.

omaranto 11y ago
Absolutely! Programming is much more comfortable with a physical keyboard. I wasn't suggesting coding on a phone is ideal, just that it is possible.
jshevek 11y ago
Edit: Just realized you might have meant _on_ the phone as in 'using the on screen keyboard'. Ug. That would be truly awful. During one weekend in which my only options were android devices, I was pleasantly surprised by the packages available in termux. With tmux, git, and ssh installed, I mounted the tablet at the right height and connected a quality keyboard via usb. I actually forgot that I was coding on a tablet! The phone experience was far more sensitive to maintaining good posture throughout, but being strongly incentivized to keep good posture actually made the experience more pleasant in a way. However, this particular phone was around 1280x720 I believe - seeing individual pixels again, and being pixel-limited (not physical size limited) in the use of panes in tmux were the only facets I found truly unpleasant. I'm eager to try coding with a high res VR headset.
onion2k 11y ago
I've recently started using Termux on my phone with a bluetooth keyboard - I'm as productive as I would be doing dev over SSH. All the tools I'd use on a server are there (node, git, nano, etc). I've written a small API server with it and it wasn't a disaster. Admittedly I'm more productive when I'm on my laptop with Atom and a couple of monitors, but if that isn't an option I can still do work. It's a bonus rather than an alternative.

siscia 11y ago

Well of course you can technically code on a smartphone or tablets, I simply meant that is absolutely not practical.

userbinator 11y ago

Those are "second-class" or even "third-class" citizens in the ecosystem. Can you use those language interpreters and compilers to write apps that can interact with the system and exchange data with the other apps? That's what makes the traditional, document-centric, PC ecosystem so powerful. While being able to play around with Project Euler can be fun, it amounts to "I can run a Turing-machine simulator" and doesn't represent anything more than a tiny fraction of what people want to do with computers when they say they want to "code". You may as well be playing one of the numerous puzzle games that involve much of the same concepts. To use your iPod Touch as an example, if it were more like a traditional desktop computer, you would also be able to do things like write an app to manage your music playlists. The tablet I currently own cost me $80 and came with a C# compiler preinstalled! (Maybe that's an extreme example: It is a Windows tablet, and Android or iOS only come with JavaScript JIT compilers preinstalled.) Not surprising if it's a Windows tablet based on the PC architecture - those are far closer to the traditional desktop than iDevices and Androids. If by C# compiler you're referring to the one that comes with the .NET framework, that's been there since the first versions; pity it's not so well known with MS trying to push VS as hard as possible...

Sephr 11y ago
> Can you use those language interpreters and compilers to write apps that can interact with the system and exchange data with the other apps? Yes, you can. See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui

interfixus 11y ago

You can code on a tablet, same way as you can stand in line at the bank. Neither is very efficient, and most of us would rather not.

interfixus 11y ago
Apparently, you can't really do anything on a tablet or phone. Or at least I can't. My phone app chose this particular comment as a nice time to play up and do a double posting. Hence the copy further down, which I am not allowed to delete.

interfixus 11y ago

You can code on a tablet, same way as you can stand in line at the bank. Neither is very efficient, and most of us would rather not.