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Will Developers Finally Start Coding On the iPad?
An anonymous reader writes "It's not so long since Apple silently dropped the restriction about iOS apps for programming — iPad owners can now code in Lua with Codea or with Python for iOS. Yesterday, a new app called Kodiak PHP brought another IDE to the iPad, this time for PHP coders. Pandodaily's Nathaniel Mott describes it as a full-blooded software development tool with comparison to other iOS apps. Cult of Mac reports that the demise of the Mac might be closer than we think, but are developers really ready to use the on-screen keyboard to do some serious work?"
my iconia tablet + bluetooth keyboard is all I carry around these days. Plenty of good ide's, can host a webserver on the tablet, and so on and so on.
Whatever, ipads. . lol
No.
..but if they were serious enough about coding on a tablet, there are plenty of portable hardware keyboards that can be connected to it.
But really, the IDE apps mentioned don't seem to allow development of actual iOS apps on the device, unlike https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl=en
Speaking for my people, No.
or when the rest of you see one of these stories predicting about the demise of desktops, laptops and every other device with a precise user interface and non-negligible computing capacity, do you just want to shoot yourself?
* It fits in my purse.
Why the hell would I want to target a platform that limits devs to basically writing toys (no system level apps, no "arbitrary code execution", no duplication of "useful" apps that would compete with Apple-flavored)?
And then, even if I did have a great idea for the next "Angry Birds"... Why the hell would I want to target a platform known for giving devs the boot for reasons ranging from "editorial" to "petty" to "borderline illegal vindictive"?
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll target iDevices as soon as they tear down the wall around the garden, and not before.
Unless coding applications are much much improved from general text input applications, not likely is my answer.
I can barely be hassled "typing" any more than 3-4 sentence email on an ipad before I get annoyed. In addition to the difficulty of typing, the lack of cursor control (touching to move the cursor is just down to luck as to where exactly it goes) means the entire experience is a retrograde step. Fine for 140 character input, useless if you want to type any lengthy piece of text.
Tablets are great for some things (content consumption primary amongst them). But honestly, any time I am told that tablets represent a "post-pc" world for content creation (whether professional coding, or simple word processing), I just laugh.
A couple of years ago I finally got an external monitor for my work PC that had more pixels than the Sun 3 I'd used back in the 1980s. (We mainly worked with laptops, and our IT department always thought that having more color depth was more important than more pixels, even though most of us work with text and simple graphics and 16-bit color was plenty. Some years they also thought portability was important, which was nice of them, but had the price of only getting 1024x768.)
Back when I was younger, 1280x1024 pixels was annoyingly small to do development work in, because it limits how much text you could fit on a screen. Now that I need reading glasses, I not only want more pixels than that, but I want a bigger screen to put them on, and holding the latest generation iPad/MacBook close to my face just means typing is awkward.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Look, I'm an iOS & web developer. I use an iPad all day long, often off-site. If anybody is the target market for this, it's me. And I think developing on an iPad is an awful idea. It's a case of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should". Is it possible to pull up a code editor on the iPad? Of course. But that doesn't make it a better choice than, well, just about any other option. The only redeeming aspect of this is if you already have an iPad with you, it's better than nothing at all. But really, how often is it that you need to do some coding unexpectedly and you only have your iPad with you? This is what laptops are for.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Is there any reason to think that the situation is going to change? I have seen Apple become increasingly restrictive about their products over the past few years; if anything, I have to wonder how long it will be before the iOS MacBook line comes out, so that only Apple's highest-end systems will allow people to write software (and even then, for a fee). What reason does Apple have to loosen the restrictions on the iOS software ecosystem, when they are making so much money?
Palm trees and 8
But this is Apple. They don't care about developers. They don't care about users. It's their way, or San Jose's courthouse.
There. Fixed that for you.
Not until there is an Emacs version available from the App Store.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
> Though the only thing that has peaked my interest
The word is piqued, you poor benighted heathen.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I do a lot of PHP coding, so I've been kind of waiting for something like that, thanks for the link.
That said, there is no way in any of the seven hells that I would do my day-to-day coding on my iPad. Try writing a few thousand characters on it, in a non-linear form, and you'll understand why.
What I definitely would love is an editor that I can use for some quick fixes or updates while I'm on the road. That way the testers can get crunching already and I might be able to send it live when I get home.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
There's no reason apple couldn't write an iOS IDE for the iPad
Except that it would violate their own terms of service, and that it would be a complete 180 for them in terms of their recent behavior. There is also no reason that Apple couldn't remove the restrictions on iOS and allow anyone to write software for it -- but no sane person can think that is going to happen.
You seem to think Apple has some kind of nonsensical vendetta agains developers
No, they just want developers to pay them for the privilege of writing software for Apple products. See, for example, the $99/year fee for permission to write iOS applications.
they only charge $100 per year to be a part of their developer program
If you do not pay, nobody can run your iOS software. You make it seem like developers are paying Apple because they like the service; in reality, they are paying Apple because the only other way to distribute iOS software is in a legal grey area.
which allows you to submit apps for approval
Or to have your application rejected because it might offend some people:
http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2008/09/steve-jobs-writes-back/
You seem to be taking that and extrapolating it to a world where Apple actively works to prevent software development on their platform
No, I said that Apple would require people to buy a high-end laptop or workstation, and that they would charge a yearly fee to develop software using that system. Which is only one or two steps away from the situation we have today: the development tools are only available for Mac OS X, you have to pay Apple to sign your software or nobody can run it, and Apple is creating more laptops that are not user serviceable. It makes sense for them, because this model for iOS has basically turned them into the most valuable company in the entire world. Why would they even stop doing something so profitable?
the apps are such a large part of their product's appeal.
Apps created by professional developers who use expensive workstations and have little problem paying Apple are part of the appeal. It is rare for an individual developer to make a popular iOS app; we are not talking about the Ubuntu repositories, we are talking about a store designed by and for corporate developers.
At no point did I say people would be forbidden from writing software for Apple devices, all I said is that users will not have such freedom; you will need to pay for the privilege.
Palm trees and 8
I love how some of the comments are of the vein, "No way! How can I code without an IDE and a debugger and my 3 massive monitors and 16-core processor? What a joke!" I've coded on the console, in vi or emacs. If people couldn't write software without modern amenities, we'd never have had the modern amenities.
The reason why we won't be coding on the iPad for quite a while to come is because that's not what Apple wants you to use it for. Light work, maybe, but it's mostly a consumption device, not a creation device. Besides, if you're that hot to code on your iPad, you're a lot better off coding remotely through SSH on a machine with that 16-core processor and 8GB of RAM. (Just because I've worked on those old machines doesn't mean it's the best way to do it. :)
Maybe one day, when this kind of device is effectively all anyone wants to use. But for now, Apple would rather that you bought more hardware, not less.
And yet for every person like you there's 100 who only ever use a computer for Facebook and email and gave been waiting for something as simple and useful as the ipad for the past 15 years. Most people have no interest in using a computer to actually accomplish anything and are perfectly happy consuming music books and itsvideos. I probably spend half my time doing the same. And with the price of these things its getting very easy to own both a laptop and a tablet. I've already decided my next phone will be the cheapest available with tethering and opt to spend the difference on a 10 inch tablet
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
full-blooded software development tool
Yeah, right.
I've taken a lot, and I'm underwhelmed.
No support for git or Subversion, i.e. revision control. Is anyone on this planet seriously still writing software without a revision control system?
No database, not even sqlite. Every non-trivial PHP application I know uses a database. How do you want to work on it if you can't at least fake DB queries?
Direct execution instead of webserver emulation. Very few PHP apps are standalone, the vast majority are written for a web environment. Frameworks and libraries do rely on webserver features for parts of their functionality (such as URL rewriting). Another major thing you can't test.
If they tried selling me this as an IDE for my Mac, I wouldn't even test it even if it were free.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Once you jailbreak an iOS device
That is a non-answer; you are saying that we need to attack our own computers just to write software for them. If "jailbreak" was something you could do using some official, built-in function of the software, maybe this would be worth considering.
there are already ways to develop subsets of iPad applications
This is also a non-answer; being able to develop for a platform means being able to develop for it, not being able to develop some approved set of macros or scripts. My mom used to program her cable receiver to turn on and change to a particular channel at a particular time, so that her VCR could record a show; would you say that she was able to "develop software using her cable box?" How is this any different?
Palm trees and 8
But this is Apple. They don't care about developers. They don't care about users. It's their way, or the highway.
OK, I agree that they don't care about developers. Apple treats developers like trash. But Apple does care about users an an aggregate sense, in that their products and marketing are designed to achieve real resonance with hundreds of millions of users and turn them into passionate evangelists. Treating developers badly is actually part of the latter goal. But it is only about money, though. Beyond that, Apple doesn't care about users either.
But it is only about money, though. Beyond that, Apple doesn't care about users either.
And beyond money, does any business care about its customers?
Codify allows you to develop for the iPad.
Except for the restrictions noted here:
https://bitbucket.org/TwoLivesLeft/codea/wiki/FAQ
This is more of a macro or scripting system than a development platform for iPad, and it is limited even for that. You might as well claim that this is a system for developing software for Windows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_for_Applications
Palm trees and 8
My development machine has 24 GB of RAM, an Intel 8 core 3.4 GHz x64 CPU, and the ability to run multiple applications at once on multiple monitors. One of those applications is a virtual machine where I host running copies of other operating systems. I'm accustomed to waiting maybe 5 or 10 seconds for a compile of my current iOS app to complete, which of course is in my virtual Hackintosh, since I chose an OS other than OS X for my main OS. (Relax, I have an official Mac, I just leave it off a lot of the time.)
So let me get this straight. I can drop down to 1 GB of RAM, and 1 GHz dual core CPU of the ARM architecture, which equates to maybe a 200 MHz x86 or something. I sacrifice freedom of choice of main OS in addition to all my virtualization abilities. I have to stare at one lonely monitor running one lonely app at a time. It will likely take 10 minutes simply to compile small to medium sized apps in Xcode, assuming I have enough memory to compile them.
Maybe someday? That's the best I can say at this point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines
Silence is a state of mime.
Jailbreak, and enjoy!
Anyone who even KNOWS what Emacs is can jailbreak an IOS device...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
pitifully small development registration fee
Which is enough to keep people away. If I had an iPad in high school, and no other computer access, I would not have been to afford that fee.
Apple has never required the purchase of a high-end desktop or workstation.
No, they have only required a system running Mac OS X, and now it is starting to look like Mac OS X is going to be locked down as well, or that Apple is going to start installing iOS on their consumer laptop / desktop lines.
Wrong. Outside of games it is in fact common.
Hm...what are the most popular apps in the App Store...
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/311311/20120308/apple-time-popular-ios-apps.htm
Well, if we delete the games from that list, what do we see? Google, Facebook, Skype, Microsoft, and a smaller company called TapTapTap. Where are these popular apps from individual developers? I guess maybe they are just not popular enough to make it into the top ten, but here is the top 100 for free apps, and I am not seeing too many individuals even when games are excluded:
https://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/free-apps/
So, let me reiterate my question for you: where are those individuals who supposedly write all of this popular software?
Users have that freedom if they want it.
If they want to be in the App store they must pay the App Store owner, one way or another.
You are envisioning some odd world were Apple is making tons of money on DEVELOPERS.
No, I am envisioning a world where Apple makes tons of money by controlling their products long after those products were purchased. That would be called "the world as it exists today."
Palm trees and 8
Its not a 'non-answer' its an invalid answer.
You have to void your warranty, break the Apple TOS ( god help you if you do ), and then be treated as the enemy by Apple once you jailbreak your iToy.
And all that so you can write software for iOS which you will never be able to put on the app store without forking cash for a Macintosh computer and the yearly developers fee?
What a joke.
Developing for smartphones isn't a particularly good way to make money regardless of platform.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Plenty of people develop on a Mac mini.
Which still increases the price by requiring the purchase of either a second (otherwise unnecessary) computer for $650 or the purchase of a $200 second operating system to run in Boot Camp if you instead decide to make the Mac your primary machine. And you have to replace this computer every four years; otherwise you risk not being able to run the latest Mac OS X. And if you're not on a recent Mac OS X, forget about being able to run the latest Xcode needed to target devices running the latest iOS.
the high school's computer lab, the city library's computer lab
I was suspended for programming a computer in middle school (OK, I'll admit, the program I wrote was not exactly in line with school rules, but what do you think 13 year old boys do?), and my city's libraries do not allow people to run any software that was not installed by the IT staff. I would not bank on CS classes being the savior here either; kids don't become hackers who can breeze through their CS course if they only get to program 90 minutes each day, and only those who can breeze through their class assignments have time to practice programming during class. When I took APCS in high school, our computers were locked down to stop us from even getting access to a terminal (yes, really -- only the approved Java IDE was allowed), and so any in-class "practice" involved either defeating the lock down (which was not all that hard) or just writing Java code.
a user account on the family PC,
Is there any guarantee that the family would have a PC? Things seem to be moving away from that sort of scenario. The only real hope one would have is that a family member is a hacker, or that a family member sees that the kid would benefit from having access to a PC. I do not think it is terribly far fetched to say that in 5-10 years, there will be people who only have "walled garden" computers in their homes.
or at least an Android tablet owned by another family member on which to run AIDE.
Perhaps, but by that point, you are no longer talking about an "edge case," you are talking about a large fraction of people who will not fall into the group. Right now, there are households that only have Apple products i.e. all laptops/desktops, tablets, and phones are Apple. If your only access to a programmable computer is Aunt Sally's Android tablet, you have pretty limited access.
Look, I get what you are saying -- kids will find their way to programmable computers. The problem is that, unless their parents can recognize that their children really do need a PC to hack on, the kids will only be getting access to other people's computers, and those other people may not be very understanding about having some teenager turn their computer into a development system.
Palm trees and 8
OK, great, and the DMCA does not restrict anyone from ripping DVDs, it only prevents people from distributing their method of doing that. That argument is crap and you know it. That argument is a direct attack on open source development (which depends on the ability of others to run your code, including people who are not developers), and it is based on the notion that having Apple approve the software that people install and use is somehow acceptable (and nevermind that they are not just refusing to allow malware, but also any political cartoons, and that developers are at Apple's mercy).
Palm trees and 8
I got an iPad this semester for school. I take all my notes on it and have all my textbooks on it; including using it as the calendar for my school events. After I got mine, I noticed how many causal computing tasks this device does better than a laptop or cellphone. The latter handle the boundary use cases very well, while the iPad does everything in between well. I could probably live with a dumb phone now, use the iPad as my utility computer, and rely on my laptop for my heavier lifting.
You might think it's an overhyped gadget (and I did too before I got one), but they're definitely industry changers.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
No, they just want developers to pay them for the privilege of writing software for Apple products. See, for example, the $99/year fee for permission to write iOS applications.
There is no such fee. There is a $100 fee if you want to a) download your app to a device instead of using the simulator, and b) sell your app on the App Store.
Just to be clear. ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
There is no shortage of mathematicians, so why do we bother with math education? There is an overabundance of people who can read and write, so why bother with English classes? Let's just have the bare minimum vocational training, right?
The last thing we need to do is to teach kids that they should just mind their own business and focus on the things their superiors tell them are important. Telling kids that they are not allowed to hack is telling them that programming is just a day job, with rules set by their superiors, and that they should only be doing it during their assigned work hours. That is precisely the wrong message to send, it is as bad as telling them that they shouldn't read unless it is part of their job.
Palm trees and 8