[dkersten]

I’m in a similar boat. I desperately want to be able to develop on my iPad, but just haven’t found a good way to do it yet. The best I’ve found so far is programming a micro:bit with the scratch-like environment.

I’ll probably try this out, but what I really want is something like Max/MSP so is don’t have to type so much (although I do have a keyboard for my iPad, but it’s not something I like to type for long durations on)

[simonh]

There are several very capable, full-blown dev environments available for the iPad and iPhone. I think the main ones are:

Codea for Lua https://codea.io/

Pythonista for Python http://omz-software.com/pythonista/

Continuous for .NET http://continuous.codes/

Codea and Pythonista also provide XCode templates you can drop your code into to create App Store apps from your projects. Not sure about Continuous.

Apple allowing iCloud syncing for code has removed the last real source of friction I'd had using Pythonista. Now I can write a script on my iPad, then reach over and run it on my phone, then if it's cross-platform sit at my Mac and run it from there too before checking it into Github. No fuss, no bother.

[mark_l_watson]

Another iPad IDE, for Haskell: Raskell

I think this is one of my best app purchases ever, based on how much fun I have with it. Great to be able to read a Haskell book on my iPad and flip back and forth the Raskell to try code snippets as I read.

Pythonista is another great app purchase if you want to be able to write Python code natively on an iPad.

[dkersten]

I’ve looked at the first two of those and I found them still too awkward due to being very text-typing heavy. Similar to play.js so I guess it mightn’t work well for me. I do have a keyboard and get by, but it’s uncomfortable for anything but shortish bursts and while I can of course use a normal keyboard, when I have one available I typically also have a laptop or desktop available so it’s easier to just use those. Like I said, I really dream of something more touch-friendly like an iPad-max/msp type language.

Still, I’ll try the ones you linked again and see. Maybe I got it wrong.

[simonh]

Graphical development environments like that are a nice idea, but tend to be somewhat limited and very domain specific.

Pythonista does come with a graphical UI builder, but it is still a very code intensive environment.

[dkersten]

> Graphical development environments like that are a nice idea, but tend to be somewhat limited and very domain specific.

Sure, they tend to be, but in my experience with them (mainly Max/MSP and Synthmaker) they don't have to be. The potential is there, but nobody has really done it well. Max/MSP came close when I last used it, but had a few annoying limitations[1] and there's a general negative sentiment towards graphical programming environments, which I feel puts a lot of people off trying them in earnest and therefore puts people off experimenting with building them (and they will never improve if people don't try -- remember, we have decades of textual language evolution and tooling).

Some of the negativity is justified, but some of it is, in my opinion, not. For example, people criticise the visual spaghetti code and cite examples from many existing visual languages (usually the domain specific ones), but ignore that these domain specific ones are used by non-programmers who never learned software engineering principles. Textual code when written by these same people is just as much spaghetti code lacking encapsulation and abstraction and good naming conventions as visual code written by these people. I've seen some Max/MSP code that was downright beautiful and super easy to follow. Don't get me wrong, on a laptop/desktop, I totally prefer textual like everyone else, but I feel on a tablet, visual would be a great fit.

But even with the negative aspects, I think the benefits of being able to use a touchscreen outweighs the negatives, when compared to using a textual language on a touchscreen. For me, at least, if not for others.

> Pythonista does come with a graphical UI builder, but it is still a very code intensive environment.

I guess I'll give it a try, but "code intensive" sounds like what I don't want. We will see. Thanks for the recommendation regardless!

[1] At the time, I couldn't figure out a way of nesting data structures, for example. It seems this is now possible, so I don't know if it was added since or if I overlooked it at the time. There were a bunch such limitations that prevented it from being useful as a general purpose language, but since its not meant to be one, I guess it doesn't matter.

[lazyjones]

https://nodered.org might be a starting point, but it’s still awkward to use and not exactly touchscreen-friendly. Looking for someting like that or LabVIEW for the iPad myself...

[dkersten]

Thanks, I'll check it out. All of the web-based ones I've tried so far weren't very touchscreen friendly, sadly. Many simply don't respond to touch events, or the nodes were too small for my fingers.

[mch82]

I like to use a full sized Mac Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad. I haven’t found a case keyboard I’ve liked.

[dkersten]

The issue I have is that I don't want to carry a full sized keyboard around with me and when I'm somewhere where I have one (ie at home or in the office) I also have a laptop or desktop available with much better development tools, so just use those. iPad development would be for when I'm away from these.

I do have a case keyboard and its fine for basic use (emails, HN comments, short documents, chat messages) but I've never been happy typing a lot on it and I've never been happy programming on it (I've tried various IDE's, web based tools, SSHing into a server etc and I always got frustrated).