10 ms·

Professional C# and F# IDE for the iPad

178 points by shanselman 10y ago

memsom 10y ago
Okay - sitting at work, looking at Visual Studio 2015, this was an instabuy. I already bought Pythinista and Codea (not that I have an iPad to run the latter on anymore) so, I'm happy to do on device development. But giving me C# in my hand? Wow... So - verdict? Here is the one minute review: Pro: The app does what it says. The code completion is there, the suggestions are sound. Creating apps is pretty simple, though you can also create scripts. It isn't doing anything funky - it is just straight up C#. The extra characters given above the keyboard are sufficient. Nothing overly bad is grabbing me outside of my Cons below. I feel like it was a sound purchase, and I'm happy to support the developer! Con: On the iPhone the screen layout is getting in the way a little. The code completion window was hidden under the keyboard when I tried to do something less trivial than a simple script. Writing the most basic console app failed with a NullReferenceException: ... var r = Console.ReadLine(); Console.WriteLine(r); ... It seems like the console isn't 2 way? This even works in LinqPad, so I'm not going insane - it's valid code. Overall, I think it is a neat little tool. Fairly polished, but it needs to be tweaked over the next few months to improve some of the features.
- melling 10y ago
  How's the F# IDE? Learning F# is on my shortlist.
  - memsom 10y ago
    I don't do F#, so I'm not qualified to comment.
    - davidgrenier 10y ago
      Learn it in a week: http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ Make a comment.
      - pc86 10y ago
        I'd rather have someone with real experience comment than someone who has done a few tutorials over the course of a week. Edit: That being said, F#FFAP is a fantastic resource.
  - praeclarum 10y ago
    I worked hard to make sure F# got equal support to C# - semantic highlighting, code completion, all that. The only real difference is the F# builds are a bit slower than C#.
  - steego 10y ago
    LINQPad is really nice for this. You get intellisense and an integrated debugger if you pony up for the license.
- memsom 10y ago
  Okay - managed to make a simple UI Xamarin Forms script.. label, button with a single click event. It wasn't hideous to make and it did work. I don't know Xamarin Forms all that well, but for prototyping this could be very nice. The IDE isn't quite there as I found more often that not, the pop up hints and help are obscured by the keyboard on my iPhone 6. I'm sure on an iPad this is much slicker. Here's a big issue though - if I develop some "cool app", how do I then transfer it to a desktop for compilation and distribution? That seems like it should be an option, but I haven't found the magic mechanism yet.
  - praeclarum 10y ago
    If you develop a cool app and want to distribute it on the App Store, then you will indeed have to transfer it to a Mac and recompile it there using Xamarin's free product. This is a mix of limitations of Continuous (doesn't have an ARM compiler included) plus a limitation of Apple (you need a Mac per their rules).
    - memsom 10y ago
      What is the best way to file bug reports? In the sketch demo I'm getting "TargetException Non-static method requites a target" when I click the "share" button.
moonshinefe 10y ago
Do many people use tablets for development? If someone uses them for development I'd be interested in hearing how well that's worked out. I think I might just be getting old, but it sounds like a terrible experience trying to code something on a touch screen (and non-desktop OS). But I'd imagine younger folks are very fast at typing on said touch screens these days, so maybe that mitigates some of it?
- hacker_9 10y ago
  You're right the experience isn't great, that doesn't stop people trying though. There are many mobile IDEs too that try all sorts of different layouts, but they are all an exercise in frustration at the end of the day. I think really it can never work, but it's interesting to see things like this, if only to verify the problem.
- maaaats 10y ago
  Attaching a keyboard and then SSHing to a computer having full developer environment works OK.
  - bad_user 10y ago
    Yet why would you want to do that instead of working on a laptop?
    - gambiting 10y ago
      Because an ipad mini is much lighter and works 4 weeks in standby, connected to wifi, and probably a good 10-15 hours of actual use? It's my device of choice when going on business trips now, despite the fact that I have a macbook air.
    - MandieD 10y ago
      Because an iPad mini fits in my purse and can be pulled out on the subway to fool around with F#.
      - 10y ago
benbristow 10y ago
If you're looking for a tablet that's also useful for programming, why would you pick up an iPad? Surely getting something like the Microsoft Surface which is a fully featured x86 machine with a keyboard is a better option?
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  Also if you're looking for a tablet you can do some work on but aren't sure about spending 500-1k$ there are plenty of cheap (100-200$ range) Atom based 8-10'' Chinese tablets running windows 10 with like 4GB ram which should be enough to do basics (example http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-obook-10-tablet.html http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-obook-10-tablet.html). Not even close in specs to things like MS surface but then again I wouldn't really care if I broke/lost it and I doubt I would use a tablet as my primary work machine anyway.
  - Yhippa 10y ago
    Have you used one of those devices before? This is exactly what I was looking for about two years ago but gave up because I could only find devices with one or two GB of RAM. This is very tempting and the Ones looks nice.
    - rubber_duck 10y ago
      I've used an older model, stuff like touch precision make it noticeable that it's a cheap device (usable but noticeably worse). As you said the 2 GB is too low for serious use (basically any multi tasking and off we go to swap, also 32 GB of storage is really low and SD card is slow). Will probably get some 4gb version before my next vacation, but you should definitely google reviews before getting one I have no idea if they have serious problems they were just the first one I remembered for cheap win 10 tablets when I looked in to them two years back.
  - gf263 10y ago
    Do you think I could install Ubuntu on that?
Nelkins 10y ago
The author of this app, Frank Krueger[1], also gave an interesting talk recently on using functional programming for mobile apps[2]. [1] http://praeclarum.org/ http://praeclarum.org/ [2] https://vimeo.com/171996394 https://vimeo.com/171996394
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  This was a good video. Thanks for the link. Explains how FP/F# architecturally fits into an iOS app situation. Several of his points were easy wins -- much better learning them now than having to re-create them through refactoring later.
tempodox 10y ago
> Real work, in my world, means programming. Yup. The iDevices are Apple's products and one should think that integration is in their self-interest. Instead, they're being restrictive, prohibitive, unhelpful and let us wait for a product like this to enable what should have been possible from day one. In that light, this app is a well-deserved slap in Apple's face. I've never had contact with the C# / F# ecosystem but this might possibly lure me in.
chris0x00 10y ago
Doesn't this violate iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.2, or has that changed?
- medecau 10y ago
  Can anyone even answer your question without breaking the dev license?
- memsom 10y ago
  Pythonista has been doing this for years now. Codea has also been allowing you you develop on device.
  - paulmd 10y ago
    The problem isn't developing on device, it's importing code/dependencies. Apple doesn't want apps that can download and run arbitrary binaries from the internet. My understanding is that they have interpreted this broadly in the past as basically "any code that the end-user didn't type by themselves or hasn't been vetted by the app's author". Again, my understanding is that this has historically thrown a huge monkeywrench into builds and dependency-resolution, for example you cannot include something like Maven. However, apparently this is OK (presumably as long as you stick to the official DotNet library set). Stuff like git is really in a grey area. Apple won't officially approve it themselves, but they have approved some scripting tools for which people have implemented git.
    - memsom 10y ago
      Well, having just got a runtime error, I can tell you why it doesn't violate anything - it is running as an interpreter on device.
- zerr 10y ago
  That was only targeted at Flash.
CJKinni 10y ago
> I hate waiting for compilation and deployment so I designed Continuous to minimize those steps. It does this by eagerly compiling your code - never waiting for you to tell it when to start. It runs your code as soon as those compiles complete successfully and displays the results of that execution right next to your code. Now you can focus on the code and the results of that code instead of being distracted by all the silly machinery of a compiler and IDE. I haven't bought it yet, but can you turn this off? I'm curious about battery usage statistics with and without this feature. One of my favorite aspects of my iPad is its battery life. If this significantly reduces it, I'd be quite sad. (Though I do suppose the battery drain would depend on the frequency of changes and size of your codebase.)
- praeclarum 10y ago
  Yes three is absolutely a toggle switch. C# and F# are mostly tolerant of this style of programming. But if you like writing "while" and "for" loops then the eager execution can really hurt. Also, if you do a lot of CPU or net intensive stuff then it's also a good time to turn "auto run" off.
bluesign 10y ago
This is really amazing, but I still can't stop to think why there is no good text editor (with plugins like ST or atom) on IOS or Android
yedpodtrzitko 10y ago
I don't know about other people, but for me programming includes some googling, checking documentation, switching to terminal... basically a lot of alt-tabbing (and some copy-pasting). Can't imagine myself doing this comfortably on a tablet.
- merpnderp 10y ago
  Doesn't cmd-tab work to switch apps on the iPad now? And ctrl-tab works in ios Safari to switch tabs. Looks like your (and my) workflow would be fine. http://9to5mac.com/2015/11/20/ipad-keyboard-shortcuts-cheat-sheet/ http://9to5mac.com/2015/11/20/ipad-keyboard-shortcuts-cheat-...
- Razengan 10y ago
  This would be perfect for some last minute coding in bed though. If it supports split-view, then you can use your browser/terminal alongside it.
- simlevesque 10y ago
  If you plug a keyboard in an iPad, you can alt+tab and you'll see this : http://i.stack.imgur.com/O40Fy.jpg http://i.stack.imgur.com/O40Fy.jpg It works the same as on Windows or Mac (not so sure). edit : I was scooped ! Let me add something : The exact same thing works on Android.
- wlesieutre 10y ago
  Believe it or not, you can alt-tab on an iPad now if you have a keyboard hooked up. https://www.subtraction.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-06-08-ios9-external-keyboard.png https://www.subtraction.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-... And while iOS won't give you a local terminal, remote servers are in reach with a pretty nice SSH client: https://panic.com/prompt/ https://panic.com/prompt/ Text selection on a touchscreen still sucks compared to a mouse, unfortunately. Still, if an IDE can hit most/all of your needs, I can see iOS working pretty well as a programming environment. Apple's Swift Playgrounds in iOS 10 feels like a first step toward them bringing Xcode over.
- recursive 10y ago
mercurysmessage 10y ago
Personally, I could never use a tablet for development. When I work I'm sitting down anyway, and I like the flexibility of a full OS and having 3 monitors.
- halfnhalf 10y ago
  You walk around with three monitors?
  - mercurysmessage 10y ago
    No, but I work from one location or another. Laptops are pretty easy to carry.
forrestthewoods 10y ago
How does source control work with this?
- njloof 10y ago
  Dropbox etc. Git integration would be awesome. I tried a few of the top Git iPad apps and none of them support sending a file to the app from Continuous.
  - praeclarum 10y ago
    This is a priority for the next update - git just ended up being a lot of work and got cut for the initial release.
portoalet 10y ago
@praeclarum how much more effort is needed if you use C# (instead of F#) to build Continuous IDE ? Which bits of F# really helped you in building this first release? and also, awesome job on the App, bought it yesterday :) Everything works as advertised, although my Ipad is a bit old, so a bit laggy in compiling the scripts.

178 points by shanselman 10y ago

Okay - sitting at work, looking at Visual Studio 2015, this was an instabuy. I already bought Pythinista and Codea (not that I have an iPad to run the latter on anymore) so, I'm happy to do on device development. But giving me C# in my hand? Wow... So - verdict? Here is the one minute review: Pro: The app does what it says. The code completion is there, the suggestions are sound. Creating apps is pretty simple, though you can also create scripts. It isn't doing anything funky - it is just straight up C#. The extra characters given above the keyboard are sufficient. Nothing overly bad is grabbing me outside of my Cons below. I feel like it was a sound purchase, and I'm happy to support the developer! Con: On the iPhone the screen layout is getting in the way a little. The code completion window was hidden under the keyboard when I tried to do something less trivial than a simple script. Writing the most basic console app failed with a NullReferenceException: ... var r = Console.ReadLine(); Console.WriteLine(r); ... It seems like the console isn't 2 way? This even works in LinqPad, so I'm not going insane - it's valid code. Overall, I think it is a neat little tool. Fairly polished, but it needs to be tweaked over the next few months to improve some of the features.

melling 10y ago
How's the F# IDE? Learning F# is on my shortlist.
- memsom 10y ago
  I don't do F#, so I'm not qualified to comment.
  - davidgrenier 10y ago
    Learn it in a week: http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ Make a comment.
    - pc86 10y ago
      I'd rather have someone with real experience comment than someone who has done a few tutorials over the course of a week. Edit: That being said, F#FFAP is a fantastic resource.
- praeclarum 10y ago
  I worked hard to make sure F# got equal support to C# - semantic highlighting, code completion, all that. The only real difference is the F# builds are a bit slower than C#.
- steego 10y ago
  LINQPad is really nice for this. You get intellisense and an integrated debugger if you pony up for the license.
memsom 10y ago
Okay - managed to make a simple UI Xamarin Forms script.. label, button with a single click event. It wasn't hideous to make and it did work. I don't know Xamarin Forms all that well, but for prototyping this could be very nice. The IDE isn't quite there as I found more often that not, the pop up hints and help are obscured by the keyboard on my iPhone 6. I'm sure on an iPad this is much slicker. Here's a big issue though - if I develop some "cool app", how do I then transfer it to a desktop for compilation and distribution? That seems like it should be an option, but I haven't found the magic mechanism yet.
- praeclarum 10y ago
  If you develop a cool app and want to distribute it on the App Store, then you will indeed have to transfer it to a Mac and recompile it there using Xamarin's free product. This is a mix of limitations of Continuous (doesn't have an ARM compiler included) plus a limitation of Apple (you need a Mac per their rules).
  - memsom 10y ago
    What is the best way to file bug reports? In the sketch demo I'm getting "TargetException Non-static method requites a target" when I click the "share" button.

moonshinefe 10y ago

Do many people use tablets for development? If someone uses them for development I'd be interested in hearing how well that's worked out. I think I might just be getting old, but it sounds like a terrible experience trying to code something on a touch screen (and non-desktop OS). But I'd imagine younger folks are very fast at typing on said touch screens these days, so maybe that mitigates some of it?

hacker_9 10y ago
You're right the experience isn't great, that doesn't stop people trying though. There are many mobile IDEs too that try all sorts of different layouts, but they are all an exercise in frustration at the end of the day. I think really it can never work, but it's interesting to see things like this, if only to verify the problem.
maaaats 10y ago
Attaching a keyboard and then SSHing to a computer having full developer environment works OK.
- bad_user 10y ago
  Yet why would you want to do that instead of working on a laptop?
  - gambiting 10y ago
    Because an ipad mini is much lighter and works 4 weeks in standby, connected to wifi, and probably a good 10-15 hours of actual use? It's my device of choice when going on business trips now, despite the fact that I have a macbook air.
  - MandieD 10y ago
    Because an iPad mini fits in my purse and can be pulled out on the subway to fool around with F#.
    - 10y ago

benbristow 10y ago

If you're looking for a tablet that's also useful for programming, why would you pick up an iPad? Surely getting something like the Microsoft Surface which is a fully featured x86 machine with a keyboard is a better option?

rubber_duck 10y ago
Also if you're looking for a tablet you can do some work on but aren't sure about spending 500-1k$ there are plenty of cheap (100-200$ range) Atom based 8-10'' Chinese tablets running windows 10 with like 4GB ram which should be enough to do basics (example http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-obook-10-tablet.html http://www.onda-tablet.com/onda-obook-10-tablet.html). Not even close in specs to things like MS surface but then again I wouldn't really care if I broke/lost it and I doubt I would use a tablet as my primary work machine anyway.
- Yhippa 10y ago
  Have you used one of those devices before? This is exactly what I was looking for about two years ago but gave up because I could only find devices with one or two GB of RAM. This is very tempting and the Ones looks nice.
  - rubber_duck 10y ago
    I've used an older model, stuff like touch precision make it noticeable that it's a cheap device (usable but noticeably worse). As you said the 2 GB is too low for serious use (basically any multi tasking and off we go to swap, also 32 GB of storage is really low and SD card is slow). Will probably get some 4gb version before my next vacation, but you should definitely google reviews before getting one I have no idea if they have serious problems they were just the first one I remembered for cheap win 10 tablets when I looked in to them two years back.
- gf263 10y ago
  Do you think I could install Ubuntu on that?

Nelkins 10y ago

The author of this app, Frank Krueger[1], also gave an interesting talk recently on using functional programming for mobile apps[2]. [1] http://praeclarum.org/ http://praeclarum.org/ [2] https://vimeo.com/171996394 https://vimeo.com/171996394

DanielBMarkham 10y ago
This was a good video. Thanks for the link. Explains how FP/F# architecturally fits into an iOS app situation. Several of his points were easy wins -- much better learning them now than having to re-create them through refactoring later.

tempodox 10y ago

> Real work, in my world, means programming. Yup. The iDevices are Apple's products and one should think that integration is in their self-interest. Instead, they're being restrictive, prohibitive, unhelpful and let us wait for a product like this to enable what should have been possible from day one. In that light, this app is a well-deserved slap in Apple's face. I've never had contact with the C# / F# ecosystem but this might possibly lure me in.

chris0x00 10y ago

Doesn't this violate iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.2, or has that changed?

medecau 10y ago
Can anyone even answer your question without breaking the dev license?
memsom 10y ago
Pythonista has been doing this for years now. Codea has also been allowing you you develop on device.
- paulmd 10y ago
  The problem isn't developing on device, it's importing code/dependencies. Apple doesn't want apps that can download and run arbitrary binaries from the internet. My understanding is that they have interpreted this broadly in the past as basically "any code that the end-user didn't type by themselves or hasn't been vetted by the app's author". Again, my understanding is that this has historically thrown a huge monkeywrench into builds and dependency-resolution, for example you cannot include something like Maven. However, apparently this is OK (presumably as long as you stick to the official DotNet library set). Stuff like git is really in a grey area. Apple won't officially approve it themselves, but they have approved some scripting tools for which people have implemented git.
  - memsom 10y ago
    Well, having just got a runtime error, I can tell you why it doesn't violate anything - it is running as an interpreter on device.
zerr 10y ago
That was only targeted at Flash.

CJKinni 10y ago

> I hate waiting for compilation and deployment so I designed Continuous to minimize those steps. It does this by eagerly compiling your code - never waiting for you to tell it when to start. It runs your code as soon as those compiles complete successfully and displays the results of that execution right next to your code. Now you can focus on the code and the results of that code instead of being distracted by all the silly machinery of a compiler and IDE. I haven't bought it yet, but can you turn this off? I'm curious about battery usage statistics with and without this feature. One of my favorite aspects of my iPad is its battery life. If this significantly reduces it, I'd be quite sad. (Though I do suppose the battery drain would depend on the frequency of changes and size of your codebase.)

praeclarum 10y ago
Yes three is absolutely a toggle switch. C# and F# are mostly tolerant of this style of programming. But if you like writing "while" and "for" loops then the eager execution can really hurt. Also, if you do a lot of CPU or net intensive stuff then it's also a good time to turn "auto run" off.

bluesign 10y ago

This is really amazing, but I still can't stop to think why there is no good text editor (with plugins like ST or atom) on IOS or Android

yedpodtrzitko 10y ago

I don't know about other people, but for me programming includes some googling, checking documentation, switching to terminal... basically a lot of alt-tabbing (and some copy-pasting). Can't imagine myself doing this comfortably on a tablet.

merpnderp 10y ago
Doesn't cmd-tab work to switch apps on the iPad now? And ctrl-tab works in ios Safari to switch tabs. Looks like your (and my) workflow would be fine. http://9to5mac.com/2015/11/20/ipad-keyboard-shortcuts-cheat-sheet/ http://9to5mac.com/2015/11/20/ipad-keyboard-shortcuts-cheat-...
Razengan 10y ago
This would be perfect for some last minute coding in bed though. If it supports split-view, then you can use your browser/terminal alongside it.
simlevesque 10y ago
If you plug a keyboard in an iPad, you can alt+tab and you'll see this : http://i.stack.imgur.com/O40Fy.jpg http://i.stack.imgur.com/O40Fy.jpg It works the same as on Windows or Mac (not so sure). edit : I was scooped ! Let me add something : The exact same thing works on Android.
wlesieutre 10y ago
Believe it or not, you can alt-tab on an iPad now if you have a keyboard hooked up. https://www.subtraction.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-06-08-ios9-external-keyboard.png https://www.subtraction.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-... And while iOS won't give you a local terminal, remote servers are in reach with a pretty nice SSH client: https://panic.com/prompt/ https://panic.com/prompt/ Text selection on a touchscreen still sucks compared to a mouse, unfortunately. Still, if an IDE can hit most/all of your needs, I can see iOS working pretty well as a programming environment. Apple's Swift Playgrounds in iOS 10 feels like a first step toward them bringing Xcode over.
recursive 10y ago

mercurysmessage 10y ago

Personally, I could never use a tablet for development. When I work I'm sitting down anyway, and I like the flexibility of a full OS and having 3 monitors.

halfnhalf 10y ago
You walk around with three monitors?
- mercurysmessage 10y ago
  No, but I work from one location or another. Laptops are pretty easy to carry.

forrestthewoods 10y ago

How does source control work with this?

njloof 10y ago
Dropbox etc. Git integration would be awesome. I tried a few of the top Git iPad apps and none of them support sending a file to the app from Continuous.
- praeclarum 10y ago
  This is a priority for the next update - git just ended up being a lot of work and got cut for the initial release.

portoalet 10y ago

@praeclarum how much more effort is needed if you use C# (instead of F#) to build Continuous IDE ? Which bits of F# really helped you in building this first release? and also, awesome job on the App, bought it yesterday :) Everything works as advertised, although my Ipad is a bit old, so a bit laggy in compiling the scripts.