20 ms·

Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone

369 points by andygmb 5y ago

bitwize 5y ago
That is some hardcore hackery-dackery. It takes dedication and a real desire to learn to put up with such adverse conditions. I know a chap who, for a while, had spotty access to a PC except for the locked down one he had at work in his (non-programming) job. He passed the long hours making tiny JavaScript hacks in the URL bar.
- ansible 5y ago
  While I don't mean to slight the front-end dev's dedication, there are more than a few of us who learned BASIC programming in the late 1970's and early 1980's... without access to any computing device at all. We would study BASIC from manuals and other books, and pour over program listings in magazines. Then we would write out programs on paper, and "interpret" them in our heads to see if they worked correctly. Some home computers like the Timex / Sinclair were relatively inexpensive ($100 USD in 1981, $330 in today's dollars), they weren't cheap even then, and that was the very lowest-end device possible (4Kbytes RAM, no storage whatsoever). An Apple II with a floppy drive and montior would run into the thousands of dollars back then.
  - egeozcan 5y ago
    When I first got my hands on a computer late 90s, other people should have seen my fathers facial expression when he saw his 10 year old son typing "weird code" into a terminal window at a "lightning" 1-2chars/sec speed :) I didn't have the pocket money to buy expensive foreign computer magazines, so I was studying at the book store when we went to the mall. People all complain that the hardware is too closed these days, but I get emotional when I see kids having access to such inexpensive hardware. Amazing times.
  - yesenadam 5y ago
    I have a similar history. What amazes me is that I used to write in assembly language for the Z80, plugging in the hex machine code numbers inline into BASIC and Turbo Pascal programs, and I never saw an assembly manual, instruction list or book, and never had an assembler! Somehow picked up instructions one at a time from magazine columns, wrote assembly on paper and hand-translated into machine code. It's such a different world now, being able to order online, if not download instantly, just about everything. I came across Rodney Zaks' Programming the Z80 about 10 years ago in a second hand shop and it was like seeing the Holy Grail—a legendary book I never imagined I'd ever see a copy of, much less own.
  - andi999 5y ago
    I have difficulties understanding this. I learned Basic ard 84 on a c64. I don't understand why anybody would learn it without access to any device. I mean what would even get one interested in it/how would one know this exists?
    - ddalex 5y ago
      Having grown up in communist Romania, I had this experience - the first computer I toyed with was a Spectrum clone, which we had at the school, and had access to it for about 2h/week. I definitely knew what it is and how to use it, but I couldn't spend time actually developing even simple programs on it. So I had a copied manual at home, and a couple of magazines with listings, and I would write my programs in basic on paper, and emulate them in my head, to verify they work. Then when I had access to the computer at the school I would use that time to type in the program and really run it. Thankfully my parents were able to buy for my own Spectrum clone after a while (when they become cheaper/more affordable, because the PCs finally were being imported, so a lot of local companies would move from their Spectrums to PCs) and then I could spend innumerable hours building simple move-the-cursors games directly on the hardware.
      - VMtest 5y ago
        not long ago I read about it, somehow I was researching about old computers and old games 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15607791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15607791 Another commenter in this post 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27904224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27904224
    - ansible 5y ago
      > I have difficulties understanding this. I learned Basic ard 84 on a c64. I don't understand why anybody would learn it without access to any device. You don't understand my youthful obsession with computers? Or you don't understand that my family couldn't afford a C64 when they first came out? I hopefully don't have to explain the 2nd reason to you. As for the first, I don't quite know how to explain that. As I learned of what computers where, and how they worked, it just overtook my ambitions in life. Being a firefighter or astronaut could just not compare to being able to command a machine to perform complex tasks at my bidding. I wanted to work on robots, I wanted to make an AI that could converse with me, I wanted to explore strange new worlds, and more.
  - nmfisher 5y ago
    I learned BASIC and bash from library books as late as the early 90s. Nowhere near as good as the real thing, but I remember loving it nonetheless.
  - fakedang 5y ago
    Early 80s?? We were doing that stuff up to the mid 00s in my school. Honestly I found it extremely unappealing because you could not get the result immediately, but in the long run, it helps to think about the working logic behind codes instead of simply shooting in the dark and debugging.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    I'm aware of this. I'm to understand that Woz wrote Apple Integer BASIC, more or less on paper, before he even built the computers it would run on.
raxxorrax 5y ago
It must be a horrible work of hackery to turn a smartphone based on iOS or Android into a useful device. Kudos to him. If he was able to do that, then development shouldn't put up much barriers anymore. I would totally buy him a decent PC though.
- saurik 5y ago
  FWIW it really isn't that hard on Android, as you can just install Termux and then install stuff like clang or the Android SDK tooling. For a while a couple years ago I was doing this and using a foldable bluetooth keyboard; the setup was small enough to fit in my jacket pocket and felt a bit more convenient than carrying around a laptop.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    The more impressive part is working with such a tiny screen I think. That takes some real perseverance.
    - cute_boi 5y ago
      actually working on tiny screen is not that hard tbh. When my macbook was under repair I used to use microsoft rdp to connect to other pc. The good thing is i can use external keyboard and mouse. And screen was somewhat okay. The only issue was battery as I keyboard + mouse drains battery a lot.
    - pedrocr 5y ago
      It's gotten to the ridiculous state where common phones will very often have more screen resolution than 14'' laptops. So as long as you have a way to comfortably stand close enough you won't be lacking for pixels. Eye strain from focusing that close will probably be higher though.
      - egeozcan 5y ago
        But in this case, they just have a low resolution phone, AFAICT.
beilabs 5y ago
Hey everyone. I'm the author of the tweet above, I came across it on one of the Nepalese Facebook Groups I'm a member of. The original source post is here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shubham-sharma-34bbab18b_webdevelopment-css-html-activity-6820715919568961536-WApS/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shubham-sharma-34bbab18b_webd...
akritrime 5y ago
I think this is more common than people realize. Especially in the Indian subcontinent, where most people have a smartphone but only few have a PC. I learnt programming on pen and paper first and then on those phone IDEs even before I had access to a pc. And even after a PC, I used to use my phone as a display for my desktop via chrome remote desktop because my monitor got damaged and only showed shades of green. And my case wasn't even that extreme, I was just not that bothered to get a proper setup until I really got into programming. The situation is way more difficult who are constrained by their financial situation and have to find a way around it.
- kqr 5y ago
  Just about everywhere, people learn programming on their graphing calculators and other low-end devices. I cut my teeth on a hand-me-down Psion 3C. In some sense, I think doing it that way might even be easier. Constraints release creativity, and being able to read a single user's manual (however thick) and technically know everything you need to know is powerful.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    I wish there was something akin to TI-Basic for smartphones. A built-in IDE with an interpreted language, with easy path to compilation. It’s easier to program a TI-89 calculator than an iPhone. Why can’t this be better?
    - zepto 5y ago
      > It’s easier to program a TI-89 calculator than an iPhone. This is just false. Have a look at Pythonista or one of the numerous JavaScript idea. Hell, there’s even an ocaml environment on iPhone. It could be a lot better, I agree, but it’s already vastly superior to a ti calculator.
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        Superior in what way? It’s far easier to write a minimal program on a TI calculator like the TI89. No App Store account or Internet required. It’s included in every calculator for free, with function integration into the hard (ie easier to be precise while typing) keyboard.
pietrovismara 5y ago
Reminds me of Kintaro Oe in "Golden Boy". He learns to program on a fake laptop built with cardboard.
arvigeus 5y ago
When I was learning programming, all I had was a big book called "Thinking in C", a notepad (pen and paper), and lots of free time. Few days a week I will go to the library to retype my solutions from the exercises.
hemanta212 5y ago
Sadly, this is how things are for many of us students, I currently study bachelors in CS here in Nepal and for me and some of my friends stuck in our villages (lockdown isn't still over here yet), we have been doing C assignments using editors avalialble in the playstore. Seeing these apps have millions of downloads, we're definitely not alone and I have seen many indian and other south asian friends do the same. My personal setup includes a 2$ stand and A samsung J7 phone paired with a keyboard over OTG cable. Since I have been doing this for few years I have a pretty complex setup of termux, a student credit powered VM from Azure, emacs. I have managed to develop python cli apps, jupyter notebooks, even flutter development using some port forwarding hacks.
- haltingproblem 5y ago
  Very impressive. keep it up. Nepal has a thriving developer scene and we should do everything to nurture it. If you are looking for Python freelance gigs then please ping me through email in my profile.
- slim 5y ago
  Install termux. Learn vim
  - hemanta212 5y ago
    Yep, I have to thank my conditions for forcing me to learn linux stuffs. As much as I would like to I cannot recommend it to friends who are just starting out to do it as I myself spend 3+ weeks to learn vim. They get perplexd on installing termux.
    - schwartzworld 5y ago
      Micro works on termux too without the learning curve.
  - Leparamour 5y ago
    Behold the disciples of vim and Emacs at it again to lead another untainted soul astray to please their dark lords. Apage satanas!
Tade0 5y ago
I used to have a similar setup on my phone when my laptop started dying and I was in the middle of moving countries. You can have Node running via termux, albeit with some limitations, e.g. no global modules. Of course debugging isn't really possible, so you'll have rely on your engineering prowess. I wanted to create a similar setup for Rust, but unfortunately compiling the compiler from source to work on Android was way above my skills (provided it was even possible to begin with).
- loulouxiv 5y ago
  It seems that termux is packaging rust now, pkg install rust
  - Tade0 5y ago
    Excellent! Although seeing how npm install took ages to complete I'm afraid it's going to take even more to compile even a debug target in Rust.
    - NotEvil 5y ago
      Actually that depend upon the phone phone you are using if its 2-3 years old. It should be fast enough.
jiggawatts 5y ago
Story time! I grew up in eastern Europe in the communist era, in a country where entire factories were run using Commodore 64 computers that were smuggled in, bypassing export controls and sanctions. The programmer at one such factory was a friend of my father, and we'd go over to his place for dinner semi-regularly. He didn't have kids, and I was six, so I was bored to tears. No toys and nobody my age to play with! He did have a C64, which was the only other one in town apart from the one at the factory. He was using it to practice programming after-hours at home. There were no games on it, but he did have a book of games. As in: a literal printed book of the source code for several simple games. That you were supposed to type in to be able to play! So I did. I had nothing else to do, so I whiled away the hours while the adults chatted poking away at the keyboard, typing in the BASIC code of the shortest, simplest game first. It didn't work at first. There were some errors. With help, I fixed the typos, and hey presto, the game worked! I still remember the elation, the feeling of accomplishment after all that work. I didn't even play the game for more than a minute or so, I immediately got to work on entering the next, longer game's code. I was hooked. Eventually I tried all three or four of the games in the book, and got bored. However, I was allowed to borrow the BASIC introductory problem set book, which I took back home with me to study. I solved the problems one at a time on grid paper (to match the fixed-width screen layout). I "ran" the programs in my head, debugged them by working out the variable values step by step on paper, and then tested my solutions on the real C64 computer whenever my parents went over for a social dinner. Most of my programs worked, and ran at ludicrous speed compared to the glacial pen & paper solutions I had worked out. I instantly understood that Computers were levers for the mind. Learning to control that raw power was intoxicating. We fled across the iron curtain as political refugees, and I took that textbook with me. I had no access to computers for nearly a year, but when we finally got settled permanently in the West my dad bought a used C64 at a garage sale for a few dollars. This was a computer that back in my homeland would be the carefully guarded control hub of a factory. Here it was a discarded plaything. Even at that age, that blew my mind. I learned more programming languages in quick succession. Pascal at the age of 11, C and Assembly at 12, C++ at 13. I had written 3D engines by the time I went to University. Statistically, if you know programming, you probably learned it in a tertiary education setting, most likely in your late teens or early twenties. Just like learning a foreign language at that age, you'll never be perfectly fluent. You'll always have an accent, no matter what you do. To me, programming is my mother tongue. I'm perfectly fluent and unaccented. You probably can't even tell, you can't hear the difference. Programming for you is something you do at work. I've had dreams in C++
Aeolun 5y ago
I think the title misrepresents this a bit. He may not have had a PC, but he definitely had a computer.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Is it time to revive the OLPC program? That one started the low-cost "netbook" trend, after that the smartphones and tablets got to the forefront. How much would a ruggedized laptop cost to make now? I know there's some RPI kits out there but they seem pretty pricey for what you get; I suspect the biggest expense is the screen, so that's an area that could be improved on. Surely there's older screen tech that can be produced at ridiculous scale nowadays? 1024x800 is enough for the basics. If that can run on a 5w USB charger that would be ideal, it could run off solar panels and cheap powerbanks then. Anyway, if that's there then the tech companies who want to deduct some taxes can order millions and distribute them to the countries where people could benefit from them.
- II2II 5y ago
  It is probably best for them to develop their own solutions based upon their own needs and what they have access to. Offering suggestions is certainly valid, but recognizing that they may not be heeded for various reasons is important. Just look at what happened when the author told his brother that he needed a laptop.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I hate that Netbooks died. I think they were just too good for too cheap of a price. A full environment (who cares if it’s slower) often costs far more now. It fell victim to market segmentation. We got locked down tablets (whose OSes were end-of-lifed soon after release) that were optimized for passive consumption instead of boundless creation.
- rahulbshrestha 5y ago
  I worked for a NGO that distributed OLPC laptops to rural schools in Nepal. Those laptops are super slow + its interface is hard to use. People in villages use smartphones that are 100X faster. Later, we switched to Raspberry pi(s) connected to peripheral devices. If you want to help out or learn more, check out: https://www.olenepal.org/ https://www.olenepal.org/.
akatechis 5y ago
Is this news?
- dariusj18 5y ago
  This just in, person uses computer to learn computers.
aww_dang 5y ago
Love to see the can-do, self-starter attitude.
yawaworht1978 5y ago
Oh my, imagine writing css , well, or any of the components on a mobile phone, let alone running the codes in sandboxes. This is horrible.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  Still better than nothing which is the point. Consider yourself lucky if you have much better options available. Only a fool would not take such an option only because people in other countries can grt PCs and hook them to their fiber services.
perilunar 5y ago
Honestly, a smartphone is more powerful than any of the computers I used to learn HTML, JS or CSS. Better screen resolution too. The main problem is screen size. Also, TIL you can buy screen magnifiers for under $20. e.g. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=screen+magnifier https://www.amazon.com/s?k=screen+magnifier
- mullen 5y ago
  This definitely falls under the category of "Why Did I Not Think of This?"
codetrotter 5y ago
I grew up in Norway in the 90’s, and at that time even here most people had at most one computer at home for the whole family. My father had a couple of books that were written by Lynda Weinman, one about HTML and one about graphics for the web. I read those books, and with pen and paper I would some write some rudimentary HTML. A couple of years later I finally got a computer of my own and started typing out HTML in Notepad and getting to see the result in Internet Explorer. This was part of the early beginning of my fascination with computers. Today I am a software developer, writing applications on macOS, iOS, FreeBSD and Linux :)
tomaszs 5y ago
I have heard about it. And wanted to try it out. Now I am preparing posts with CSS tips on a phone. It is possible to learn the big three on a mobile.
Robotbeat 5y ago
This is why I hate how modern smartphones make it so hard to program anything. IPhone App Store policies make it all but impossible to actual use the iPhone for full fledged programming (including compiling, etc). I otherwise love the iPhone.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
beebeepka 5y ago
Story reminded me about this one time I had to listen to a Samsung representative at a summit. While she was pitching their VR web browsing initiative, she somehow mentioned how a [Samsung] smartphone could be used as a PC. Being the cinyc that I am, I assumed the worst: you are trying to sell me a junk solution to a problem I don't have, lady. Looking at stories like this, I realize I have no vision and understand a lot less about the world than my ego has been telling me
deleted 5y ago
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Ostrogodsky 5y ago
I would only say that coming from a poor third world country too I am a little less gullible, or using the more PC term my degree of belief stretches a lot when reading posts like these.People in western rich countries trust more, that can be a blessing or a sin.
atum47 5y ago
Being a poor student in Brasil, I went through my first two years of college using a R$ 400,00 (around 80 dollars) Dell notebook. Several of my projects hosted on GitHub were written using this machine. There's a super market chain here (Carrefour) that sells eletronics. They usually would hold a sales when something is wrong (a product is about to expire or an electronic presents mal functioning). My notebook in question fell into this category, it presents a small defect. The defect?! The Windows pre installed in the machine wouldn't activate online (some problem with the key). So I got the notebook extra cheap, activated it by phone (since I could not activate it by software), saved the key, remove windows, installed linux (which doubled the speed of the machine, of course) and went my merry way into college. I don't know the rest of the world, but a smartphone in Brazil can be compared in price to a notebook (a not very good one). The second advice from this story is Linux can give new life to old machines, try it.
- grogenaut 5y ago
  I've added 5+ years of life to several of my old laptops with Linux. Spouse was hesitant to try it on their dying windows machine but with Linux it was very usable and absurdly faster. It's actually still usable and it's a 2006 dell. It's almost time to move their win7 machine to ubuntu
wly_cdgr 5y ago
My first reaction was "Get this person a Raspberry Pi stat!", but that might not help them much if they don't have access to a monitor. What I imagine would work better for them is a small light laptop with a couple USB ports for good compatibility with inexpensive peripherals, a long-lasting replaceable battery of an affordable and common type, and no requirement that the computer be connected to the internet to be useful (f*ck off and die, Chromebook). I've had Asus and Lenovo laptops that fit this bill pretty well, and the Lenovo was even close to being cheap enough to be practical (~$150) (the Asus was more like $250, but it was also a 1080p 14" with a 9+-hour battery). Of the stuff I can easily find available online right now, a Kano would fit the bill pretty well (you can find them on sale for also ~$150), as would the low end Lenovo IdeaPads. I like those a bit better than the Kano as they have a sturdier build and include a webcam ...Found the newer version of that Asus - this baby is a beaut - https://www.microcenter.com/product/633069/asus-l410ma-ps04-14-laptop-computer-black https://www.microcenter.com/product/633069/asus-l410ma-ps04-...
davgard 5y ago
Many third-world countries use a mobile phones, and some use paper to practice and learn to code. Especially at the start of this online class, many people struggle with their internet connection.
ellis0n 5y ago
I developing mobile games and apps on mobile phone/tablet/raspeberrypi or computer with minimalistic programming language ACPUL on AnimationCPU platform. Join to platform develop and TestFlight. See tech details here https://animationcpu.herokuapp.com https://animationcpu.herokuapp.com
fiftyfifty 5y ago
This is why I think it sucks when device manufacturers like Apple and to a lesser extent Google (Google Play has been more open to allowing development related apps in their store) restrict the kinds of apps that can be downloaded from their store. Smart phones are every bit a generic computing device as a PC, and for many people world wide it's the only one they have access too. For companies like Apple to say nope, you can take selfies with this thing, but you are absolutely not allowed to upload an IDE or code editor to our app store is really taking away opportunities like the one in this story.
bigdict 5y ago
What is the connection to Nepal? The author seems to be from India.
- rckoepke 5y ago
  You are correct, the title on HN is wrong. > "We are indians bro not Nepalese :laugh:"
  - andygmb 5y ago
    FWIW, this thread originally linked to a tweet from a Nepalese-based person who found it in a Nepalese FB group, hence the confusion. No ill intent.
forgotpwd16 5y ago
That "just a mobile phone" is a computer in small form factor and possibly more powerful than computers two decades ago. Especially on Android devices where you can run chrooted a full GNU/Linux environment, the only difficulty (but not a barrier) smartphones have for being used productively are the small display screens and the lack of keyboard.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  Yeah I don't think anyone is under the impression that any smart phone is not powerful enough to do this, but have you actually tried development on a phone? Even with a keyboard this is masochistic.
  - forgotpwd16 5y ago
    But many seem to think that smartphone implies being limited to mobile apps to do work which fortunately on Android isn't the case. Tried to see if it's possible but no, I haven't used it to build something substantial. I didn't mind that much the small display as the lack of keyboard. A phone with slide out keyboard will probably be a fine choice for this usage.
  - nikau 5y ago
    Have you ever coded on a commodore 64 plugged into a CRT television via RF? People adapt to what they have.
malinens 5y ago
This is how i started programming 17 years ago in WAP/J2ME era. I either programmed on the phone or I went to local library
exdsq 5y ago
The author on LinkedIn has stated they're Indian, not Nepalese
- agucova 5y ago
  Source, comments on the original post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shubham-sharma-34bbab18b_webdevelopment-css-html-activity-6820715919568961536-WApS/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shubham-sharma-34bbab18b_webd...
eitally 5y ago
You may or may not be surprised at how many kids in Silicon Valley (especially San Jose) did a full year of remote school using only a mobile phone, and in many cases, where that was a shared mobile phone and the only household method of accessing the internet. It worked about as well as you might expect, given these kids are often from households with multiple other disadvantages.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/aCdT3 https://archive.is/aCdT3
hyperpallium2 5y ago
But a phone is a computer... Though Google is slowly killing apps like termux.
saeranv 5y ago
Recently I was looking to donate some money to Sri Lankan charities and was talking to various groups, asking them what their most urgent needs were and where I should allocate money. One charity was based in the Mullithivu region[1] which is an impoverished rural region in Sri Lanka. The kids there don't neccessarilly have access to the internet or computers at home, so with COVID are left behind as the schools move towards some form of digital teaching. I thought it was interesting that one of the most effective solutions for this that the charity found was to purchase USB keys loaded with digital curriculums. Apparently while the homes don't have computers, almost all have Smart TVs (to access tamil language programming?) and thus the kids could follow along with school as long as they had their USB keys. The director of the charity also mentioned they were also trying to get the curriculum through phones (he mentioned Viber explicitly, but I'm not sure why it needed to be limited to that), which was another device all families had access to. We ended up purchasing USB keys for an entire school ($5 each) and money to fund digital content creation. I wonder if there would be a big impact on education in these areas if someone could work out the UX/UI/ergonomics of teaching through mobile phone. Or whether it's just a better idea to fund a infrastructure (school computer labs). The advantage of the former, I suppose, is one could just do it and see if it has an effect. [1] http://careforedu.org/ http://careforedu.org/
- gurubavan 5y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this! I've also been looking to donate to Sri Lankan charities in the north-east but it has been difficult to understand which charities are still operating and have a legitimate impact.
  - saeranv 5y ago
    We donated to six charities and I ended up learning a lot (from a position of significant ignorance) about the charity landscape. I was shocked to find out that $33 per month can fund a full undergrad scholarship for a student. I was particularly impressed/interested in this non-profit that acts as a coding school and accelerator: http://www.yarlithub.org/ http://www.yarlithub.org/
rishabhd 5y ago
This might be a big deal, but I have been mentoring this guy on an on and off basis, he does not have a laptop, is not a CS student (was studying for medical exam - NEET) and writes all his code on an android cellphone. He got interested in cyber security and wrote his first functional keylogger (disclaimer : it was good exercise to teach him basic *nix utilities and how native functionalities can be leveraged by an attackers to their end, not for malicious objectives) using his phone as an IDE, compiler and what not. Talent, can come from anywhere. https://github.com/shivamsuyal/Android-Keylogger https://github.com/shivamsuyal/Android-Keylogger side note, he just completed his 12th class (us equivalent of high school) and is looking to research more in cybersec.
pjmlp 5y ago
On the same subject, and without wanting to steel main subject. "Developing ON (not for) a Nokia Feature Phone with Elvis Chidera" https://podtail.com/podcast/hanselminutes/developing-on-not-for-a-nokia-feature-phone-with-e/ https://podtail.com/podcast/hanselminutes/developing-on-not-...
ycosynot 5y ago
To help poor countries I was working on Arduino Nano (3$ computer) with a 2" OLED monochrome display (very very little energy required, especially if you show pixels only 1/10th of a time and use eye remanence). I don't have time to make it through, but maybe someone will be interested. It has low CPU but you can stream any kind of data through USB serial.
jstrieb 5y ago
For anyone reading this thread who may be in a similar situation: I wrote a script that allows you to use GitHub Actions as a computer. Any work you do can be committed to a repository and saved for later. It can either boot up a command-line, or a complete desktop interface. Both are available entirely over the Web (and thus a smartphone). All you need is a free GitHub account. Both are also available over Tor in case you're in a situation where things might be blocked. https://github.com/jstrieb/ctf-collab https://github.com/jstrieb/ctf-collab I originally built this for doing competitive hacking challenges with a friend, but I have also used it at libraries, and from my phone. In general, it is great for when you need a desktop but don't have one, or for when you can't install things on the computer you're using. Hopefully this helps others who need access to such resources for learning!
lerie 5y ago
I am not surprised at all, and this is very common nowadays.
indigodaddy 5y ago
The LinkedIn author states in the LinkedIn post comment where someone referenced this HN post, that they are Indian, not Nepalese. Perhaps the title should be amended.
- shubham05 5y ago
  yes, we are indians.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
I top this with an incredible guy from Nigeria who learned programming using feature phone with J2ME. Fascinating read: https://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/news/went-programming-feature-phone-working-mit-startup/ https://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/news/went-programming-featu...
Ronson 5y ago
He "learned HTML, CSS, Sass, bootstrap, material UI, and Javascript with the setup he has made 2 months ago". No he didn't. If I could be bothered, I would take a picture of a rocket launch and say my little brother reached orbit today with this spatula glued to a deodorant can.
pikwip 5y ago
The student (and post author) says he is Indian, not Nepalese.
Grammrr 5y ago
It's close to my story, I learned html and js using my mobile - Nokia N70. There was no ide or syntax highlighting and very little multitasking, but I was able to build websites and publish them. Was such a great moment when people saw my website! Got PC with the internet 3 years after my first website went public
shubham05 5y ago
we are from india my friends
nikau 5y ago
Other than small screen size there isn't much that's amazing here. Compared to learning on a Commodore 64s with no internet its easy mode.
geetayadav 5y ago
Our company is based in India. Let me know if your brother is interesting in internship. We are a digital consulting firm.
MarkusWandel 5y ago
And that, in a nutshell, is why it's just wrong for smartphone operating systems and app stores to go to increasingly extreme lengths to ban programming environments. termux itself, while wonderful as a concept, is already too crippled on my Android 9 device to be much use, and is/will be even more so in later versions.
lazarohcm 5y ago
This guy in Brazil followed the same steps. Sad to see how difficult education/life is for some people, good see some of them can surpass it. link: https://g1.globo.com/economia/tecnologia/noticia/2021/03/09/como-brasileiro-virou-programador-usando-celulares-quebrados.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/economia/tecnologia/noticia/2021/03/09/...

369 points by andygmb 5y ago

That is some hardcore hackery-dackery. It takes dedication and a real desire to learn to put up with such adverse conditions. I know a chap who, for a while, had spotty access to a PC except for the locked down one he had at work in his (non-programming) job. He passed the long hours making tiny JavaScript hacks in the URL bar.

ansible 5y ago
While I don't mean to slight the front-end dev's dedication, there are more than a few of us who learned BASIC programming in the late 1970's and early 1980's... without access to any computing device at all. We would study BASIC from manuals and other books, and pour over program listings in magazines. Then we would write out programs on paper, and "interpret" them in our heads to see if they worked correctly. Some home computers like the Timex / Sinclair were relatively inexpensive ($100 USD in 1981, $330 in today's dollars), they weren't cheap even then, and that was the very lowest-end device possible (4Kbytes RAM, no storage whatsoever). An Apple II with a floppy drive and montior would run into the thousands of dollars back then.
- egeozcan 5y ago
  When I first got my hands on a computer late 90s, other people should have seen my fathers facial expression when he saw his 10 year old son typing "weird code" into a terminal window at a "lightning" 1-2chars/sec speed :) I didn't have the pocket money to buy expensive foreign computer magazines, so I was studying at the book store when we went to the mall. People all complain that the hardware is too closed these days, but I get emotional when I see kids having access to such inexpensive hardware. Amazing times.
- yesenadam 5y ago
  I have a similar history. What amazes me is that I used to write in assembly language for the Z80, plugging in the hex machine code numbers inline into BASIC and Turbo Pascal programs, and I never saw an assembly manual, instruction list or book, and never had an assembler! Somehow picked up instructions one at a time from magazine columns, wrote assembly on paper and hand-translated into machine code. It's such a different world now, being able to order online, if not download instantly, just about everything. I came across Rodney Zaks' Programming the Z80 about 10 years ago in a second hand shop and it was like seeing the Holy Grail—a legendary book I never imagined I'd ever see a copy of, much less own.
- andi999 5y ago
  I have difficulties understanding this. I learned Basic ard 84 on a c64. I don't understand why anybody would learn it without access to any device. I mean what would even get one interested in it/how would one know this exists?
  - ddalex 5y ago
    Having grown up in communist Romania, I had this experience - the first computer I toyed with was a Spectrum clone, which we had at the school, and had access to it for about 2h/week. I definitely knew what it is and how to use it, but I couldn't spend time actually developing even simple programs on it. So I had a copied manual at home, and a couple of magazines with listings, and I would write my programs in basic on paper, and emulate them in my head, to verify they work. Then when I had access to the computer at the school I would use that time to type in the program and really run it. Thankfully my parents were able to buy for my own Spectrum clone after a while (when they become cheaper/more affordable, because the PCs finally were being imported, so a lot of local companies would move from their Spectrums to PCs) and then I could spend innumerable hours building simple move-the-cursors games directly on the hardware.
    - VMtest 5y ago
      not long ago I read about it, somehow I was researching about old computers and old games 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15607791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15607791 Another commenter in this post 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27904224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27904224
  - ansible 5y ago
    > I have difficulties understanding this. I learned Basic ard 84 on a c64. I don't understand why anybody would learn it without access to any device. You don't understand my youthful obsession with computers? Or you don't understand that my family couldn't afford a C64 when they first came out? I hopefully don't have to explain the 2nd reason to you. As for the first, I don't quite know how to explain that. As I learned of what computers where, and how they worked, it just overtook my ambitions in life. Being a firefighter or astronaut could just not compare to being able to command a machine to perform complex tasks at my bidding. I wanted to work on robots, I wanted to make an AI that could converse with me, I wanted to explore strange new worlds, and more.
- nmfisher 5y ago
  I learned BASIC and bash from library books as late as the early 90s. Nowhere near as good as the real thing, but I remember loving it nonetheless.
- fakedang 5y ago
  Early 80s?? We were doing that stuff up to the mid 00s in my school. Honestly I found it extremely unappealing because you could not get the result immediately, but in the long run, it helps to think about the working logic behind codes instead of simply shooting in the dark and debugging.
- bitwize 5y ago
  I'm aware of this. I'm to understand that Woz wrote Apple Integer BASIC, more or less on paper, before he even built the computers it would run on.

raxxorrax 5y ago

It must be a horrible work of hackery to turn a smartphone based on iOS or Android into a useful device. Kudos to him. If he was able to do that, then development shouldn't put up much barriers anymore. I would totally buy him a decent PC though.

saurik 5y ago
FWIW it really isn't that hard on Android, as you can just install Termux and then install stuff like clang or the Android SDK tooling. For a while a couple years ago I was doing this and using a foldable bluetooth keyboard; the setup was small enough to fit in my jacket pocket and felt a bit more convenient than carrying around a laptop.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  The more impressive part is working with such a tiny screen I think. That takes some real perseverance.
  - cute_boi 5y ago
    actually working on tiny screen is not that hard tbh. When my macbook was under repair I used to use microsoft rdp to connect to other pc. The good thing is i can use external keyboard and mouse. And screen was somewhat okay. The only issue was battery as I keyboard + mouse drains battery a lot.
  - pedrocr 5y ago
    It's gotten to the ridiculous state where common phones will very often have more screen resolution than 14'' laptops. So as long as you have a way to comfortably stand close enough you won't be lacking for pixels. Eye strain from focusing that close will probably be higher though.
    - egeozcan 5y ago
      But in this case, they just have a low resolution phone, AFAICT.

beilabs 5y ago

Hey everyone. I'm the author of the tweet above, I came across it on one of the Nepalese Facebook Groups I'm a member of. The original source post is here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shubham-sharma-34bbab18b_webdevelopment-css-html-activity-6820715919568961536-WApS/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shubham-sharma-34bbab18b_webd...

akritrime 5y ago

I think this is more common than people realize. Especially in the Indian subcontinent, where most people have a smartphone but only few have a PC. I learnt programming on pen and paper first and then on those phone IDEs even before I had access to a pc. And even after a PC, I used to use my phone as a display for my desktop via chrome remote desktop because my monitor got damaged and only showed shades of green. And my case wasn't even that extreme, I was just not that bothered to get a proper setup until I really got into programming. The situation is way more difficult who are constrained by their financial situation and have to find a way around it.

kqr 5y ago
Just about everywhere, people learn programming on their graphing calculators and other low-end devices. I cut my teeth on a hand-me-down Psion 3C. In some sense, I think doing it that way might even be easier. Constraints release creativity, and being able to read a single user's manual (however thick) and technically know everything you need to know is powerful.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I wish there was something akin to TI-Basic for smartphones. A built-in IDE with an interpreted language, with easy path to compilation. It’s easier to program a TI-89 calculator than an iPhone. Why can’t this be better?
  - zepto 5y ago
    > It’s easier to program a TI-89 calculator than an iPhone. This is just false. Have a look at Pythonista or one of the numerous JavaScript idea. Hell, there’s even an ocaml environment on iPhone. It could be a lot better, I agree, but it’s already vastly superior to a ti calculator.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      Superior in what way? It’s far easier to write a minimal program on a TI calculator like the TI89. No App Store account or Internet required. It’s included in every calculator for free, with function integration into the hard (ie easier to be precise while typing) keyboard.

pietrovismara 5y ago

Reminds me of Kintaro Oe in "Golden Boy". He learns to program on a fake laptop built with cardboard.

arvigeus 5y ago

When I was learning programming, all I had was a big book called "Thinking in C", a notepad (pen and paper), and lots of free time. Few days a week I will go to the library to retype my solutions from the exercises.

hemanta212 5y ago

Sadly, this is how things are for many of us students, I currently study bachelors in CS here in Nepal and for me and some of my friends stuck in our villages (lockdown isn't still over here yet), we have been doing C assignments using editors avalialble in the playstore. Seeing these apps have millions of downloads, we're definitely not alone and I have seen many indian and other south asian friends do the same. My personal setup includes a 2$ stand and A samsung J7 phone paired with a keyboard over OTG cable. Since I have been doing this for few years I have a pretty complex setup of termux, a student credit powered VM from Azure, emacs. I have managed to develop python cli apps, jupyter notebooks, even flutter development using some port forwarding hacks.

haltingproblem 5y ago
Very impressive. keep it up. Nepal has a thriving developer scene and we should do everything to nurture it. If you are looking for Python freelance gigs then please ping me through email in my profile.
slim 5y ago
Install termux. Learn vim
- hemanta212 5y ago
  Yep, I have to thank my conditions for forcing me to learn linux stuffs. As much as I would like to I cannot recommend it to friends who are just starting out to do it as I myself spend 3+ weeks to learn vim. They get perplexd on installing termux.
  - schwartzworld 5y ago
    Micro works on termux too without the learning curve.
- Leparamour 5y ago
  Behold the disciples of vim and Emacs at it again to lead another untainted soul astray to please their dark lords. Apage satanas!

Tade0 5y ago

I used to have a similar setup on my phone when my laptop started dying and I was in the middle of moving countries. You can have Node running via termux, albeit with some limitations, e.g. no global modules. Of course debugging isn't really possible, so you'll have rely on your engineering prowess. I wanted to create a similar setup for Rust, but unfortunately compiling the compiler from source to work on Android was way above my skills (provided it was even possible to begin with).

loulouxiv 5y ago
It seems that termux is packaging rust now, pkg install rust
- Tade0 5y ago
  Excellent! Although seeing how npm install took ages to complete I'm afraid it's going to take even more to compile even a debug target in Rust.
  - NotEvil 5y ago
    Actually that depend upon the phone phone you are using if its 2-3 years old. It should be fast enough.

jiggawatts 5y ago

Story time! I grew up in eastern Europe in the communist era, in a country where entire factories were run using Commodore 64 computers that were smuggled in, bypassing export controls and sanctions. The programmer at one such factory was a friend of my father, and we'd go over to his place for dinner semi-regularly. He didn't have kids, and I was six, so I was bored to tears. No toys and nobody my age to play with! He did have a C64, which was the only other one in town apart from the one at the factory. He was using it to practice programming after-hours at home. There were no games on it, but he did have a book of games. As in: a literal printed book of the source code for several simple games. That you were supposed to type in to be able to play! So I did. I had nothing else to do, so I whiled away the hours while the adults chatted poking away at the keyboard, typing in the BASIC code of the shortest, simplest game first. It didn't work at first. There were some errors. With help, I fixed the typos, and hey presto, the game worked! I still remember the elation, the feeling of accomplishment after all that work. I didn't even play the game for more than a minute or so, I immediately got to work on entering the next, longer game's code. I was hooked. Eventually I tried all three or four of the games in the book, and got bored. However, I was allowed to borrow the BASIC introductory problem set book, which I took back home with me to study. I solved the problems one at a time on grid paper (to match the fixed-width screen layout). I "ran" the programs in my head, debugged them by working out the variable values step by step on paper, and then tested my solutions on the real C64 computer whenever my parents went over for a social dinner. Most of my programs worked, and ran at ludicrous speed compared to the glacial pen & paper solutions I had worked out. I instantly understood that Computers were levers for the mind. Learning to control that raw power was intoxicating. We fled across the iron curtain as political refugees, and I took that textbook with me. I had no access to computers for nearly a year, but when we finally got settled permanently in the West my dad bought a used C64 at a garage sale for a few dollars. This was a computer that back in my homeland would be the carefully guarded control hub of a factory. Here it was a discarded plaything. Even at that age, that blew my mind. I learned more programming languages in quick succession. Pascal at the age of 11, C and Assembly at 12, C++ at 13. I had written 3D engines by the time I went to University. Statistically, if you know programming, you probably learned it in a tertiary education setting, most likely in your late teens or early twenties. Just like learning a foreign language at that age, you'll never be perfectly fluent. You'll always have an accent, no matter what you do. To me, programming is my mother tongue. I'm perfectly fluent and unaccented. You probably can't even tell, you can't hear the difference. Programming for you is something you do at work. I've had dreams in C++

Aeolun 5y ago

I think the title misrepresents this a bit. He may not have had a PC, but he definitely had a computer.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Is it time to revive the OLPC program? That one started the low-cost "netbook" trend, after that the smartphones and tablets got to the forefront. How much would a ruggedized laptop cost to make now? I know there's some RPI kits out there but they seem pretty pricey for what you get; I suspect the biggest expense is the screen, so that's an area that could be improved on. Surely there's older screen tech that can be produced at ridiculous scale nowadays? 1024x800 is enough for the basics. If that can run on a 5w USB charger that would be ideal, it could run off solar panels and cheap powerbanks then. Anyway, if that's there then the tech companies who want to deduct some taxes can order millions and distribute them to the countries where people could benefit from them.

II2II 5y ago
It is probably best for them to develop their own solutions based upon their own needs and what they have access to. Offering suggestions is certainly valid, but recognizing that they may not be heeded for various reasons is important. Just look at what happened when the author told his brother that he needed a laptop.
Robotbeat 5y ago
I hate that Netbooks died. I think they were just too good for too cheap of a price. A full environment (who cares if it’s slower) often costs far more now. It fell victim to market segmentation. We got locked down tablets (whose OSes were end-of-lifed soon after release) that were optimized for passive consumption instead of boundless creation.
rahulbshrestha 5y ago
I worked for a NGO that distributed OLPC laptops to rural schools in Nepal. Those laptops are super slow + its interface is hard to use. People in villages use smartphones that are 100X faster. Later, we switched to Raspberry pi(s) connected to peripheral devices. If you want to help out or learn more, check out: https://www.olenepal.org/ https://www.olenepal.org/.

akatechis 5y ago

Is this news?

dariusj18 5y ago
This just in, person uses computer to learn computers.

aww_dang 5y ago

Love to see the can-do, self-starter attitude.

yawaworht1978 5y ago

Oh my, imagine writing css , well, or any of the components on a mobile phone, let alone running the codes in sandboxes. This is horrible.

beebeepka 5y ago
Still better than nothing which is the point. Consider yourself lucky if you have much better options available. Only a fool would not take such an option only because people in other countries can grt PCs and hook them to their fiber services.

perilunar 5y ago

Honestly, a smartphone is more powerful than any of the computers I used to learn HTML, JS or CSS. Better screen resolution too. The main problem is screen size. Also, TIL you can buy screen magnifiers for under $20. e.g. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=screen+magnifier https://www.amazon.com/s?k=screen+magnifier

mullen 5y ago
This definitely falls under the category of "Why Did I Not Think of This?"

codetrotter 5y ago

I grew up in Norway in the 90’s, and at that time even here most people had at most one computer at home for the whole family. My father had a couple of books that were written by Lynda Weinman, one about HTML and one about graphics for the web. I read those books, and with pen and paper I would some write some rudimentary HTML. A couple of years later I finally got a computer of my own and started typing out HTML in Notepad and getting to see the result in Internet Explorer. This was part of the early beginning of my fascination with computers. Today I am a software developer, writing applications on macOS, iOS, FreeBSD and Linux :)

tomaszs 5y ago

I have heard about it. And wanted to try it out. Now I am preparing posts with CSS tips on a phone. It is possible to learn the big three on a mobile.

Robotbeat 5y ago

This is why I hate how modern smartphones make it so hard to program anything. IPhone App Store policies make it all but impossible to actual use the iPhone for full fledged programming (including compiling, etc). I otherwise love the iPhone.

deleted 5y ago
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beebeepka 5y ago

Story reminded me about this one time I had to listen to a Samsung representative at a summit. While she was pitching their VR web browsing initiative, she somehow mentioned how a [Samsung] smartphone could be used as a PC. Being the cinyc that I am, I assumed the worst: you are trying to sell me a junk solution to a problem I don't have, lady. Looking at stories like this, I realize I have no vision and understand a lot less about the world than my ego has been telling me

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Ostrogodsky 5y ago

I would only say that coming from a poor third world country too I am a little less gullible, or using the more PC term my degree of belief stretches a lot when reading posts like these.People in western rich countries trust more, that can be a blessing or a sin.

atum47 5y ago

Being a poor student in Brasil, I went through my first two years of college using a R$ 400,00 (around 80 dollars) Dell notebook. Several of my projects hosted on GitHub were written using this machine. There's a super market chain here (Carrefour) that sells eletronics. They usually would hold a sales when something is wrong (a product is about to expire or an electronic presents mal functioning). My notebook in question fell into this category, it presents a small defect. The defect?! The Windows pre installed in the machine wouldn't activate online (some problem with the key). So I got the notebook extra cheap, activated it by phone (since I could not activate it by software), saved the key, remove windows, installed linux (which doubled the speed of the machine, of course) and went my merry way into college. I don't know the rest of the world, but a smartphone in Brazil can be compared in price to a notebook (a not very good one). The second advice from this story is Linux can give new life to old machines, try it.

grogenaut 5y ago
I've added 5+ years of life to several of my old laptops with Linux. Spouse was hesitant to try it on their dying windows machine but with Linux it was very usable and absurdly faster. It's actually still usable and it's a 2006 dell. It's almost time to move their win7 machine to ubuntu

wly_cdgr 5y ago

My first reaction was "Get this person a Raspberry Pi stat!", but that might not help them much if they don't have access to a monitor. What I imagine would work better for them is a small light laptop with a couple USB ports for good compatibility with inexpensive peripherals, a long-lasting replaceable battery of an affordable and common type, and no requirement that the computer be connected to the internet to be useful (f*ck off and die, Chromebook). I've had Asus and Lenovo laptops that fit this bill pretty well, and the Lenovo was even close to being cheap enough to be practical (~$150) (the Asus was more like $250, but it was also a 1080p 14" with a 9+-hour battery). Of the stuff I can easily find available online right now, a Kano would fit the bill pretty well (you can find them on sale for also ~$150), as would the low end Lenovo IdeaPads. I like those a bit better than the Kano as they have a sturdier build and include a webcam ...Found the newer version of that Asus - this baby is a beaut - https://www.microcenter.com/product/633069/asus-l410ma-ps04-14-laptop-computer-black https://www.microcenter.com/product/633069/asus-l410ma-ps04-...

davgard 5y ago

Many third-world countries use a mobile phones, and some use paper to practice and learn to code. Especially at the start of this online class, many people struggle with their internet connection.

ellis0n 5y ago

I developing mobile games and apps on mobile phone/tablet/raspeberrypi or computer with minimalistic programming language ACPUL on AnimationCPU platform. Join to platform develop and TestFlight. See tech details here https://animationcpu.herokuapp.com https://animationcpu.herokuapp.com

fiftyfifty 5y ago

This is why I think it sucks when device manufacturers like Apple and to a lesser extent Google (Google Play has been more open to allowing development related apps in their store) restrict the kinds of apps that can be downloaded from their store. Smart phones are every bit a generic computing device as a PC, and for many people world wide it's the only one they have access too. For companies like Apple to say nope, you can take selfies with this thing, but you are absolutely not allowed to upload an IDE or code editor to our app store is really taking away opportunities like the one in this story.

bigdict 5y ago

What is the connection to Nepal? The author seems to be from India.

rckoepke 5y ago
You are correct, the title on HN is wrong. > "We are indians bro not Nepalese :laugh:"
- andygmb 5y ago
  FWIW, this thread originally linked to a tweet from a Nepalese-based person who found it in a Nepalese FB group, hence the confusion. No ill intent.

forgotpwd16 5y ago

That "just a mobile phone" is a computer in small form factor and possibly more powerful than computers two decades ago. Especially on Android devices where you can run chrooted a full GNU/Linux environment, the only difficulty (but not a barrier) smartphones have for being used productively are the small display screens and the lack of keyboard.

IshKebab 5y ago
Yeah I don't think anyone is under the impression that any smart phone is not powerful enough to do this, but have you actually tried development on a phone? Even with a keyboard this is masochistic.
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  But many seem to think that smartphone implies being limited to mobile apps to do work which fortunately on Android isn't the case. Tried to see if it's possible but no, I haven't used it to build something substantial. I didn't mind that much the small display as the lack of keyboard. A phone with slide out keyboard will probably be a fine choice for this usage.
- nikau 5y ago
  Have you ever coded on a commodore 64 plugged into a CRT television via RF? People adapt to what they have.

malinens 5y ago

This is how i started programming 17 years ago in WAP/J2ME era. I either programmed on the phone or I went to local library

exdsq 5y ago

The author on LinkedIn has stated they're Indian, not Nepalese

agucova 5y ago
Source, comments on the original post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shubham-sharma-34bbab18b_webdevelopment-css-html-activity-6820715919568961536-WApS/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/shubham-sharma-34bbab18b_webd...

eitally 5y ago

You may or may not be surprised at how many kids in Silicon Valley (especially San Jose) did a full year of remote school using only a mobile phone, and in many cases, where that was a shared mobile phone and the only household method of accessing the internet. It worked about as well as you might expect, given these kids are often from households with multiple other disadvantages.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/aCdT3 https://archive.is/aCdT3

hyperpallium2 5y ago

But a phone is a computer... Though Google is slowly killing apps like termux.

saeranv 5y ago

Recently I was looking to donate some money to Sri Lankan charities and was talking to various groups, asking them what their most urgent needs were and where I should allocate money. One charity was based in the Mullithivu region[1] which is an impoverished rural region in Sri Lanka. The kids there don't neccessarilly have access to the internet or computers at home, so with COVID are left behind as the schools move towards some form of digital teaching. I thought it was interesting that one of the most effective solutions for this that the charity found was to purchase USB keys loaded with digital curriculums. Apparently while the homes don't have computers, almost all have Smart TVs (to access tamil language programming?) and thus the kids could follow along with school as long as they had their USB keys. The director of the charity also mentioned they were also trying to get the curriculum through phones (he mentioned Viber explicitly, but I'm not sure why it needed to be limited to that), which was another device all families had access to. We ended up purchasing USB keys for an entire school ($5 each) and money to fund digital content creation. I wonder if there would be a big impact on education in these areas if someone could work out the UX/UI/ergonomics of teaching through mobile phone. Or whether it's just a better idea to fund a infrastructure (school computer labs). The advantage of the former, I suppose, is one could just do it and see if it has an effect. [1] http://careforedu.org/ http://careforedu.org/

gurubavan 5y ago
Thanks for mentioning this! I've also been looking to donate to Sri Lankan charities in the north-east but it has been difficult to understand which charities are still operating and have a legitimate impact.
- saeranv 5y ago
  We donated to six charities and I ended up learning a lot (from a position of significant ignorance) about the charity landscape. I was shocked to find out that $33 per month can fund a full undergrad scholarship for a student. I was particularly impressed/interested in this non-profit that acts as a coding school and accelerator: http://www.yarlithub.org/ http://www.yarlithub.org/

rishabhd 5y ago

This might be a big deal, but I have been mentoring this guy on an on and off basis, he does not have a laptop, is not a CS student (was studying for medical exam - NEET) and writes all his code on an android cellphone. He got interested in cyber security and wrote his first functional keylogger (disclaimer : it was good exercise to teach him basic *nix utilities and how native functionalities can be leveraged by an attackers to their end, not for malicious objectives) using his phone as an IDE, compiler and what not. Talent, can come from anywhere. https://github.com/shivamsuyal/Android-Keylogger https://github.com/shivamsuyal/Android-Keylogger side note, he just completed his 12th class (us equivalent of high school) and is looking to research more in cybersec.

pjmlp 5y ago

On the same subject, and without wanting to steel main subject. "Developing ON (not for) a Nokia Feature Phone with Elvis Chidera" https://podtail.com/podcast/hanselminutes/developing-on-not-for-a-nokia-feature-phone-with-e/ https://podtail.com/podcast/hanselminutes/developing-on-not-...

ycosynot 5y ago

To help poor countries I was working on Arduino Nano (3$ computer) with a 2" OLED monochrome display (very very little energy required, especially if you show pixels only 1/10th of a time and use eye remanence). I don't have time to make it through, but maybe someone will be interested. It has low CPU but you can stream any kind of data through USB serial.

jstrieb 5y ago

For anyone reading this thread who may be in a similar situation: I wrote a script that allows you to use GitHub Actions as a computer. Any work you do can be committed to a repository and saved for later. It can either boot up a command-line, or a complete desktop interface. Both are available entirely over the Web (and thus a smartphone). All you need is a free GitHub account. Both are also available over Tor in case you're in a situation where things might be blocked. https://github.com/jstrieb/ctf-collab https://github.com/jstrieb/ctf-collab I originally built this for doing competitive hacking challenges with a friend, but I have also used it at libraries, and from my phone. In general, it is great for when you need a desktop but don't have one, or for when you can't install things on the computer you're using. Hopefully this helps others who need access to such resources for learning!

lerie 5y ago

I am not surprised at all, and this is very common nowadays.

indigodaddy 5y ago

The LinkedIn author states in the LinkedIn post comment where someone referenced this HN post, that they are Indian, not Nepalese. Perhaps the title should be amended.

shubham05 5y ago
yes, we are indians.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

I top this with an incredible guy from Nigeria who learned programming using feature phone with J2ME. Fascinating read: https://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/news/went-programming-feature-phone-working-mit-startup/ https://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/news/went-programming-featu...

Ronson 5y ago

He "learned HTML, CSS, Sass, bootstrap, material UI, and Javascript with the setup he has made 2 months ago". No he didn't. If I could be bothered, I would take a picture of a rocket launch and say my little brother reached orbit today with this spatula glued to a deodorant can.

pikwip 5y ago

The student (and post author) says he is Indian, not Nepalese.

Grammrr 5y ago

It's close to my story, I learned html and js using my mobile - Nokia N70. There was no ide or syntax highlighting and very little multitasking, but I was able to build websites and publish them. Was such a great moment when people saw my website! Got PC with the internet 3 years after my first website went public

shubham05 5y ago

we are from india my friends

nikau 5y ago

Other than small screen size there isn't much that's amazing here. Compared to learning on a Commodore 64s with no internet its easy mode.

geetayadav 5y ago

Our company is based in India. Let me know if your brother is interesting in internship. We are a digital consulting firm.

MarkusWandel 5y ago

And that, in a nutshell, is why it's just wrong for smartphone operating systems and app stores to go to increasingly extreme lengths to ban programming environments. termux itself, while wonderful as a concept, is already too crippled on my Android 9 device to be much use, and is/will be even more so in later versions.

lazarohcm 5y ago

This guy in Brazil followed the same steps. Sad to see how difficult education/life is for some people, good see some of them can surpass it. link: https://g1.globo.com/economia/tecnologia/noticia/2021/03/09/como-brasileiro-virou-programador-usando-celulares-quebrados.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/economia/tecnologia/noticia/2021/03/09/...