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I'd argue that a mobile phone is not an adequate platform for coding. The touchscreen and keyboard layouts make it difficult to type needed symbols, distracting

I'd argue that a mobile phone is not an adequate platform for coding. The touchscreen and keyboard layouts make it difficult to type needed symbols, distracting from the problem at hand. Coding requires deep thought, but phones are optimized for moving around rather than sitting in one place and thinking. As such, use cases like maps, calendars, communication and alarms get priority. The reason people buy a phone is to communicate and get around. And manufacturers cater to those needs.

ofalkaed 3y ago
>I'd argue that a mobile phone is not an adequate platform for coding. The touchscreen and keyboard layouts make it difficult to type needed symbols, distracting from the problem at hand. Something akin to hypercard could be made to work very well on a smartphone, or possibly a dataflow environment like PureData but more general purpose. But yeah, 99% of people just want to use their phone and development for phones is much simpler on a proper computer.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  Drag and drop ‘stuff’ is the worst on phones. You need screen space for it. It works on tablets, but on phones it’s mostly awful. I cannot think of an example where it is smooth and usable, especially on the move.
  - ofalkaed 3y ago
    There is no reason to use drag and drop.
    - anonzzzies 3y ago
      HyperCard does though?
      - ofalkaed 3y ago
        To quote myself with emphasis added, "Something akin to hypercard could be made to work." So something like hypercard but not hypercard and reworked to the strengths of a smartphones interface.
        anonzzzies 3y ago
        Alright, I agree. Not easy to come up with the akin though.
        ofalkaed 3y ago
        Hypercard could be reworked without the drag and drop, double tap or long press pops up a menu, select what you need from the menu. It would work like every other phone app and leverage the other apps which come stock, want to place a picture than double tap to get the menu, click add image and it opens your gallery app and lets you select a picture and do basic editing, click done and the image is placed. And I can think of dozens of ways to extend the hypercard idea based off what a smartphone offers.
saurik 3y ago
As someone who has done a non-trivial amount of coding work directly on my phone, I'll say you just get good at being able to type the symbols you need (though I agree it isn't great; but like, that's what BASIC is for, and I certainly spent a ton of time coding BASIC on my old TI calculators ;P). I also frankly find my phone to be an extremely pleasant device to "sit in one place and think", and given how many games and media consumption apps exist for phones I'm surprised that isn't more obvious ;P. Like, often when I want to seriously think about something, I'll go pick up my phone and lie down in bed, pulling up the notes app--or ssh'ing to a server and using vim--to work on stuff without all of the worldly distractions of having to sit at my desk.
- still_grokking 3y ago
  I've seen the youth doing this nowadays. But just watching it causes severe physical pain in me. Everything is awkward, and painful slow. In the time you would have written a page of code on a desktop in an IDE you hardly manage to write a few lines of working code on a phone. Alone the fact that you can't use keyboard shortcuts efficiently is more than crippling! Not to mention the extremely tiny screen on a phone. On a desktop you have for serous work 2, or better 3 screens (or some big wide one), for a reason. And regarding deep thinking: The best setting for that is imho not the desktop, nor the bed. Best for thinking is actually walking around, while not being distracted by anything else.
  - wruza 3y ago
    It’s neither awkward nor slow, it’s just tooling that sucks (we have to type in a bare textarea, which is designed for text). Add some helpers and keys to the keyboard and it’s done. Like an email field makes your on-screen kbd have @ and . characters, you can add {} and [] and autoindent. Best for thinking is actually walking around, while not being distracted by anything else. Fwiw my best ideas were born in a bathroom.
    - wiseowise 3y ago
      > It’s neither awkward nor slow Compared to mouse and keyboard it is.
ihatepython 3y ago
> I'd argue that a mobile phone is not an adequate platform for coding. Neither is a calculator.
Thomashuet 3y ago
I started programming on a Ti-89 calculator and I loved it and it made me want to continue on this path. Modern smartphones would be much better for programming than my old Ti: better performance, better screen, better programming language.
fulafel 3y ago
Most mobile games are about manipulating symbols, and there is a significant body of work on visual programming. So this part should not be a blocker.
seba_dos1 3y ago
A teenage me regularly debugging hard programming problems many years ago on a Neo Freerunner with a small resistive touchscreen in a tram while traveling to/from school using nothing but a slightly pointy fingernail would disagree. It's not as convenient as a PC with full keyboard, sure, but it still works fine given the right software.
bluedino 3y ago
We wrote tons of games on 80's computers with crappy keyboards and 40x25 text on poor quality TV's
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Even the rubber keys of a ZX Spectrum were better than trying to type on a small touchscreen, though.
- bawolff 3y ago
  I feel like the crapiest of keyboards is still better than an on screen keyboard for long text entry. I tried ssh-ing from my phone once, and it was an absolutely terrible experience.
pavlov 3y ago
> “The touchscreen and keyboard layouts make it difficult to type needed symbols” The key layout on a touchscreen is entirely adaptable though. A language with a custom symbol set designed for small touchscreen entry could perform well. I’ve long thought that an APL-derived language might be great for phone coding. The custom symbols aren’t a problem on a touchscreen, and the extreme code density means you could fit a lot of meaningful program on a small screen.
hugginn 3y ago
I would like to challenge you a little. Most programming languages are all designed around an environment where typing is relatively easy and quick. Keyboards allow you to input so much quicker than phone screens. However, the phone has the pro that you can have any arbitrary keyboard layout. In that case I think that perhaps APL might be pretty well suited. Perhaps we should design languages around the idea that they should be used on phonescreens, where we don't need to restrict the character set to ASCI? I have an APL program and I like using it basically like a calculator, but I imagine one could write full programs on a phone, if we did some tweaking to the interface.
aswanson 3y ago
I dunno. Python on the phone might be kinda cool.
- zamnos 3y ago
  There are a few Python environments for iOS, and I'm sure Android also has some. Pythonista is probably one of the better ones. http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ http://omz-software.com/pythonista/
zby 3y ago
Input is one thing - but also how much of a program can you see on a smartphone screen?
HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
Sure, but you shouldn't need to develop on the phone itself. Where's an Arduino-like IDE that I can run on Windows or Linux to develop for iPhone? Should just be able to connect a USB cable and go. Where's the Python support? Of course smartphones are mainstream so most owners are users not potential developers.. unlike the late 70s/early 80's computer scene which grew out of the hobby electronics scene where the early users were much more technical. My first computer came as a kit - bag of components and a motherboard - had to get out the soldering iron to build it.

ofalkaed 3y ago

>I'd argue that a mobile phone is not an adequate platform for coding. The touchscreen and keyboard layouts make it difficult to type needed symbols, distracting from the problem at hand. Something akin to hypercard could be made to work very well on a smartphone, or possibly a dataflow environment like PureData but more general purpose. But yeah, 99% of people just want to use their phone and development for phones is much simpler on a proper computer.

anonzzzies 3y ago
Drag and drop ‘stuff’ is the worst on phones. You need screen space for it. It works on tablets, but on phones it’s mostly awful. I cannot think of an example where it is smooth and usable, especially on the move.
- ofalkaed 3y ago
  There is no reason to use drag and drop.
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    HyperCard does though?
    - ofalkaed 3y ago
      To quote myself with emphasis added, "Something akin to hypercard could be made to work." So something like hypercard but not hypercard and reworked to the strengths of a smartphones interface.
      - anonzzzies 3y ago
        Alright, I agree. Not easy to come up with the akin though.
        ofalkaed 3y ago
        Hypercard could be reworked without the drag and drop, double tap or long press pops up a menu, select what you need from the menu. It would work like every other phone app and leverage the other apps which come stock, want to place a picture than double tap to get the menu, click add image and it opens your gallery app and lets you select a picture and do basic editing, click done and the image is placed. And I can think of dozens of ways to extend the hypercard idea based off what a smartphone offers.

saurik 3y ago

As someone who has done a non-trivial amount of coding work directly on my phone, I'll say you just get good at being able to type the symbols you need (though I agree it isn't great; but like, that's what BASIC is for, and I certainly spent a ton of time coding BASIC on my old TI calculators ;P). I also frankly find my phone to be an extremely pleasant device to "sit in one place and think", and given how many games and media consumption apps exist for phones I'm surprised that isn't more obvious ;P. Like, often when I want to seriously think about something, I'll go pick up my phone and lie down in bed, pulling up the notes app--or ssh'ing to a server and using vim--to work on stuff without all of the worldly distractions of having to sit at my desk.

still_grokking 3y ago
I've seen the youth doing this nowadays. But just watching it causes severe physical pain in me. Everything is awkward, and painful slow. In the time you would have written a page of code on a desktop in an IDE you hardly manage to write a few lines of working code on a phone. Alone the fact that you can't use keyboard shortcuts efficiently is more than crippling! Not to mention the extremely tiny screen on a phone. On a desktop you have for serous work 2, or better 3 screens (or some big wide one), for a reason. And regarding deep thinking: The best setting for that is imho not the desktop, nor the bed. Best for thinking is actually walking around, while not being distracted by anything else.
- wruza 3y ago
  It’s neither awkward nor slow, it’s just tooling that sucks (we have to type in a bare textarea, which is designed for text). Add some helpers and keys to the keyboard and it’s done. Like an email field makes your on-screen kbd have @ and . characters, you can add {} and [] and autoindent. Best for thinking is actually walking around, while not being distracted by anything else. Fwiw my best ideas were born in a bathroom.
  - wiseowise 3y ago
    > It’s neither awkward nor slow Compared to mouse and keyboard it is.

ihatepython 3y ago

> I'd argue that a mobile phone is not an adequate platform for coding. Neither is a calculator.

Thomashuet 3y ago

I started programming on a Ti-89 calculator and I loved it and it made me want to continue on this path. Modern smartphones would be much better for programming than my old Ti: better performance, better screen, better programming language.

fulafel 3y ago

Most mobile games are about manipulating symbols, and there is a significant body of work on visual programming. So this part should not be a blocker.

seba_dos1 3y ago

A teenage me regularly debugging hard programming problems many years ago on a Neo Freerunner with a small resistive touchscreen in a tram while traveling to/from school using nothing but a slightly pointy fingernail would disagree. It's not as convenient as a PC with full keyboard, sure, but it still works fine given the right software.

bluedino 3y ago

We wrote tons of games on 80's computers with crappy keyboards and 40x25 text on poor quality TV's

bluescrn 3y ago
Even the rubber keys of a ZX Spectrum were better than trying to type on a small touchscreen, though.
bawolff 3y ago
I feel like the crapiest of keyboards is still better than an on screen keyboard for long text entry. I tried ssh-ing from my phone once, and it was an absolutely terrible experience.

pavlov 3y ago

> “The touchscreen and keyboard layouts make it difficult to type needed symbols” The key layout on a touchscreen is entirely adaptable though. A language with a custom symbol set designed for small touchscreen entry could perform well. I’ve long thought that an APL-derived language might be great for phone coding. The custom symbols aren’t a problem on a touchscreen, and the extreme code density means you could fit a lot of meaningful program on a small screen.

hugginn 3y ago

I would like to challenge you a little. Most programming languages are all designed around an environment where typing is relatively easy and quick. Keyboards allow you to input so much quicker than phone screens. However, the phone has the pro that you can have any arbitrary keyboard layout. In that case I think that perhaps APL might be pretty well suited. Perhaps we should design languages around the idea that they should be used on phonescreens, where we don't need to restrict the character set to ASCI? I have an APL program and I like using it basically like a calculator, but I imagine one could write full programs on a phone, if we did some tweaking to the interface.

aswanson 3y ago

I dunno. Python on the phone might be kinda cool.

zamnos 3y ago
There are a few Python environments for iOS, and I'm sure Android also has some. Pythonista is probably one of the better ones. http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ http://omz-software.com/pythonista/

zby 3y ago

Input is one thing - but also how much of a program can you see on a smartphone screen?

HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago

Sure, but you shouldn't need to develop on the phone itself. Where's an Arduino-like IDE that I can run on Windows or Linux to develop for iPhone? Should just be able to connect a USB cable and go. Where's the Python support? Of course smartphones are mainstream so most owners are users not potential developers.. unlike the late 70s/early 80's computer scene which grew out of the hobby electronics scene where the early users were much more technical. My first computer came as a kit - bag of components and a motherboard - had to get out the soldering iron to build it.