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I bought the iPad 2 the day it came out and was thrilled to use it for about two months. But over the last four, I've realized: the reason I keep coming back t

by djacobs 15y ago

I bought the iPad 2 the day it came out and was thrilled to use it for about two months. But over the last four, I've realized: the reason I keep coming back to computers is that I enjoy computers. Learning more about their internals, harnessing that for my own ends, creating solutions to real problems I have, without frameworks or IDEs or buzzwords. I don't so much care for anything about the iPad but iBooks. I bought the Macbook Air when Apple upgraded it, and now I carry it with me everywhere. There's plenty I can do on it, even without a network connection (i.e., all my coding), and I really feel attached to my featherweight computer. Mobile coding is really fulfilling, yes. But I will never want to code by touch typing. Since buying the MBA, I haven't once thought about touching the iPad. And I don't see that changing.

cageface 15y ago
I jumped into iOS development earlier this year but I feel like a cheat when I almost always go back to my MBA to do anything other than read in Kindle/iBooks. To be honest I'd much rather be writing native Mac OS X apps but the bulk of new development work seems to be on iOS these days. As the other responder said, Apple has kind of disrupted its own market by making such polished and portable laptops.
seltzered_ 15y ago
Good for your adult self. If I was an upper-middle-class 10 year old kid who couldn't afford a nice computer, but could coax my parents into buying an iPad over a game console, I'd be so thrilled to have something that guided me into developing fun little games. When I was 10-12, I had a freaking AIX PowerPC machine because my dad could get one easily. Did I learn programming with such a fancy machine? absolutely not, I ended up just installing windows NT on it so I could record and play with sounds.
- djacobs 15y ago
  A very good point, and I don't disagree with you. I used RPGEditor and GameEditor when I was a kid and couldn't figure out how to use plain C++ to build a game. The authors of this software have done a really amazing job, that's undeniable. But I'm thinking here about two things: - There is a notion that the only thing stopping tablets from overtaking computers is the fact that you can't develop software on tablets. Under that model of the world, this is a major breakthrough for tablets. But I'm not sure it actually solves the problem of high-quality development. - There is also a notion that the iPad is a distillation of the best parts of a computer, the things that give people joy, and it removes "cruft" that people don't want to think about: filesystems, command line access, and the like. I wanted to take this opportunity to say that this isn't the case for a lot of people and that the ability to code on an iPad doesn't mean the iPad can give as much joy to a developer as a real computer can. My comment was less manifesto, more musing about why I can't get rid of real computers.
  - seltzered_ 15y ago
    true. I haven't bought a tablet yet, but the two main uses I as an adult have when I get one will be : 1) let me read books (i've been getting rid of most/all the physical books i own because of tablets, and reading them on a laptop doesn't feel the same). 2) act as a second 'travel' monitor for my laptop.
  - victim 15y ago
    the biggest issue with tablets is the lack of a compiler and the processing power. With cloud computing and technologies like dropbox, developers can queue their apps and get it to compile on machine with grunt, package it and upload it to testflight and then download it to the mobile devices again... and test it. True development on a mobile platform.
    - cageface 15y ago
      I think the bigger issues are the coarse resolution of the touch interface and lack of usable keyboard. The former prevents the kind of dense, widget-rich UIs you need for a tool as complex as a real IDE. The latter can be ameliorated with an external keyboard but then you've got a combination that's actually more awkward and less portable than a laptop. To try replace a laptop with a tablet (or vice-versa) is to misunderstand the strengths and limitations of each, IMO.
- Tichy 15y ago
  Hm, maybe if you are so poor, you should consider buying a 300$ netbook rather than an 500$ iPad? At least if you are interested in programming.
eric-hu 15y ago
I'm sticking to my keyboard for near-future development as well, but I hope some more people explore in this direction. It'd be really cool to see this program or similar ones evolve. Maybe one day, I might be able to code high level programming structures with gestures.

by djacobs 15y ago

cageface 15y ago

I jumped into iOS development earlier this year but I feel like a cheat when I almost always go back to my MBA to do anything other than read in Kindle/iBooks. To be honest I'd much rather be writing native Mac OS X apps but the bulk of new development work seems to be on iOS these days. As the other responder said, Apple has kind of disrupted its own market by making such polished and portable laptops.

seltzered_ 15y ago

Good for your adult self. If I was an upper-middle-class 10 year old kid who couldn't afford a nice computer, but could coax my parents into buying an iPad over a game console, I'd be so thrilled to have something that guided me into developing fun little games. When I was 10-12, I had a freaking AIX PowerPC machine because my dad could get one easily. Did I learn programming with such a fancy machine? absolutely not, I ended up just installing windows NT on it so I could record and play with sounds.

djacobs 15y ago
A very good point, and I don't disagree with you. I used RPGEditor and GameEditor when I was a kid and couldn't figure out how to use plain C++ to build a game. The authors of this software have done a really amazing job, that's undeniable. But I'm thinking here about two things: - There is a notion that the only thing stopping tablets from overtaking computers is the fact that you can't develop software on tablets. Under that model of the world, this is a major breakthrough for tablets. But I'm not sure it actually solves the problem of high-quality development. - There is also a notion that the iPad is a distillation of the best parts of a computer, the things that give people joy, and it removes "cruft" that people don't want to think about: filesystems, command line access, and the like. I wanted to take this opportunity to say that this isn't the case for a lot of people and that the ability to code on an iPad doesn't mean the iPad can give as much joy to a developer as a real computer can. My comment was less manifesto, more musing about why I can't get rid of real computers.
- seltzered_ 15y ago
  true. I haven't bought a tablet yet, but the two main uses I as an adult have when I get one will be : 1) let me read books (i've been getting rid of most/all the physical books i own because of tablets, and reading them on a laptop doesn't feel the same). 2) act as a second 'travel' monitor for my laptop.
- victim 15y ago
  the biggest issue with tablets is the lack of a compiler and the processing power. With cloud computing and technologies like dropbox, developers can queue their apps and get it to compile on machine with grunt, package it and upload it to testflight and then download it to the mobile devices again... and test it. True development on a mobile platform.
  - cageface 15y ago
    I think the bigger issues are the coarse resolution of the touch interface and lack of usable keyboard. The former prevents the kind of dense, widget-rich UIs you need for a tool as complex as a real IDE. The latter can be ameliorated with an external keyboard but then you've got a combination that's actually more awkward and less portable than a laptop. To try replace a laptop with a tablet (or vice-versa) is to misunderstand the strengths and limitations of each, IMO.
Tichy 15y ago
Hm, maybe if you are so poor, you should consider buying a 300$ netbook rather than an 500$ iPad? At least if you are interested in programming.

eric-hu 15y ago

I'm sticking to my keyboard for near-future development as well, but I hope some more people explore in this direction. It'd be really cool to see this program or similar ones evolve. Maybe one day, I might be able to code high level programming structures with gestures.