3 ms·

The way I see it is: Age 4: All users are sysadmins or programmers, because the ones who are not have moved to a tablet.

by S4M 13y ago

nnq 13y ago
I don't see tablets as anything more than just another PC form factor... a secretary that needs to type fast will use a tablet with a keyboard and a programmer just as well. Once we go past Apple's "tablet as an appliance" dark age, as Microsoft gets more market share (yeah, I'm siding with Microsoft here (and against Google and Apple) and I think they are, willingly or not, pushing things in a better direction by having the same platform for both tablets and PCs, even if their product quality seems inferior) and Android get more and more features and starts to look like a "real OS", programmers and sys admins will be able to use tablets just as well, attaching keyboards to them when needed and plugging them into a large screen at their desks... heck, I can even imagine programmers typing code in the air on the grand-grand-...-grand-children of Google glass, with a pair of mechanic-feedback gloves or something.
- S4M 13y ago
  Interesting, when I wrote my first comment I was thinking that PCs would stay the machine where programmers would write software for devices dedicated to the large public (tablets, smartphones, smart glasses, smart watches, etc.), but after reading your answer I realize that I may be wrong, and as you say, those devices could very well be used as development machine. I don't know what's the state of the coders tools for smaller devices, but that's an idea PG would like to fund: http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html
  - nnq 13y ago
    I don't think making dev tools tailored for a specific form factor or even platform is a good idea. You can use something like Ms Surface Pro to do dev work right now with the tools already available even if they're far from perfect - this is why I like Ms's "vision" on the whole tablet saga better. What I'd really love to have (and even I'd even pay good bucks for it!) would be a browser-based-polyglot-IDE, maybe an IDE implemented as a browser extension, that would simplify the fucked up workflow of web frontend dev (none of the existing editors, IDEs or anything else properly handles the ungodly tangle of HTML/CSS/SASS/LESS/Javascript/Typescript/Dart/CoffeeScript...) and be totally platform independent so I can use it on any device and just tweak some configs to adapt it for a particular small screen size. I think "RFS 5: Development on Handhelds " has a wrong perspective, you don't want to think about development on handhelds, you need to have dev tools that are so platform independent and form factor independent that they work on anything (code-mirror seemed a nice base last time I checked, but compared to what's needed is like comparing the linux kernel with full fledged desktop linux distro...). And if you think about tools for developing native apps, I think this is "sailink a sinking ship" anyway and on top of that you could always be put out of business by Apple or Ms making an Xcode or VS version optimized for handhelds and giving away for free and "express" version that will be good enough for most. Anyway, this has veered seriously off topic, but dev tools are something I care about and I couldn't refrain from commenting on that :)

The way I see it is: Age 4: All users are sysadmins or programmers, because the ones who are not have moved to a tablet.

by S4M 13y ago

The way I see it is: Age 4: All users are sysadmins or programmers, because the ones who are not have moved to a tablet.

nnq 13y ago

I don't see tablets as anything more than just another PC form factor... a secretary that needs to type fast will use a tablet with a keyboard and a programmer just as well. Once we go past Apple's "tablet as an appliance" dark age, as Microsoft gets more market share (yeah, I'm siding with Microsoft here (and against Google and Apple) and I think they are, willingly or not, pushing things in a better direction by having the same platform for both tablets and PCs, even if their product quality seems inferior) and Android get more and more features and starts to look like a "real OS", programmers and sys admins will be able to use tablets just as well, attaching keyboards to them when needed and plugging them into a large screen at their desks... heck, I can even imagine programmers typing code in the air on the grand-grand-...-grand-children of Google glass, with a pair of mechanic-feedback gloves or something.

S4M 13y ago
Interesting, when I wrote my first comment I was thinking that PCs would stay the machine where programmers would write software for devices dedicated to the large public (tablets, smartphones, smart glasses, smart watches, etc.), but after reading your answer I realize that I may be wrong, and as you say, those devices could very well be used as development machine. I don't know what's the state of the coders tools for smaller devices, but that's an idea PG would like to fund: http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html
- nnq 13y ago
  I don't think making dev tools tailored for a specific form factor or even platform is a good idea. You can use something like Ms Surface Pro to do dev work right now with the tools already available even if they're far from perfect - this is why I like Ms's "vision" on the whole tablet saga better. What I'd really love to have (and even I'd even pay good bucks for it!) would be a browser-based-polyglot-IDE, maybe an IDE implemented as a browser extension, that would simplify the fucked up workflow of web frontend dev (none of the existing editors, IDEs or anything else properly handles the ungodly tangle of HTML/CSS/SASS/LESS/Javascript/Typescript/Dart/CoffeeScript...) and be totally platform independent so I can use it on any device and just tweak some configs to adapt it for a particular small screen size. I think "RFS 5: Development on Handhelds " has a wrong perspective, you don't want to think about development on handhelds, you need to have dev tools that are so platform independent and form factor independent that they work on anything (code-mirror seemed a nice base last time I checked, but compared to what's needed is like comparing the linux kernel with full fledged desktop linux distro...). And if you think about tools for developing native apps, I think this is "sailink a sinking ship" anyway and on top of that you could always be put out of business by Apple or Ms making an Xcode or VS version optimized for handhelds and giving away for free and "express" version that will be good enough for most. Anyway, this has veered seriously off topic, but dev tools are something I care about and I couldn't refrain from commenting on that :)