Will Developers Finally Start Coding On the iPad? 463
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?"
No... (Score:4, Interesting)
..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 [google.com]
Suuuuuurvey says... "No"! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
No. (Score:3, Interesting)
No (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Today. (Score:3, Interesting)
True. For other companies. So normally I would agree with you.
But this is Apple. They don't care about developers. They don't care about users. It's their way, or the highway.
But of course the media will always put, at the end of the article, "but Apple will have it in the next version!" as they always do. Even though they don't. Yet they never do this for any other company
Re:Is it just me? (Score:2, Interesting)
Most people aren't predicting the utter demise of desktops and laptops, they're just predicting (quite correctly, I think) their decline to a more niche and more expensive kind of product. Desktops/Laptops have been riding on the coattails of Joe Sixpack, who never really wanted to do all the things those boxes can do. Joe wants to get onto his Facebook, share some photos on his Tumblr, and maybe watch some Youtube videos. He can do that far easier on a tablet, so the rather accidental mass-market status the traditional PC got is not going to last. PC type systems will be for the very few who do things like CAD, programming, and other tasks that actually need such a device.
That doesn't mean the PC will die utterly. It just means a return to the days where you had to spend $15-20,000 to get that sort of a machine, because it will only be in demand from a niche, rather than from a billion average people around the world who can get by just fine with a tablet and smartphone, and actually prefer that to the complexity and insecurity of an open PC. You were riding on the economy of scale that never really made sense. It's that economy of scale that's going away, not the PC itself.
So don't worry, open computing platforms won't die. They will just fall back to their natural niche. There's little way to pretend that won't happen, because it's already starting to happen now. Barring a pretty damn sudden shift in rates of change, tablets will outsell traditional PCs within the next two years, maybe even sooner. It IS going to happen, and it is going to become the dominant consumer platform, but you'll still be able to buy PC-like systems, just not as cheap.
Re:Suuuuuurvey says... "No"! (Score:1, Interesting)
I've coded on worse (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:In what way can you not do that? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Today. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Yes. (Score:0, Interesting)
OK, you have fun with your little walled garden; the rest of us will be over here, developing our software without having to pay fees, without having to wait for some unrelated company to approve of our code, and without having to connect to any network or system.
I'm sorry. And you are making how much money off that practice rather than using the "walled garden"? I love how the haters seem to be mostly people who code for fun, not for food.
Re:iPad-only HS student is an edge case (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: bluetooth keyboard (Score:4, Interesting)
And Javascript is an excellent intermediatory language.
Apache Cordova is an interesting project aimed at building native apps on most smartphone platforms using HTML, CSS and Javascript to describe the app.
http://docs.phonegap.com/en/1.8.1/index.html [phonegap.com]