STar Trek's handheld computers never made sense to me, unless they have some crazy good AI that does all the work for you based on vague inputs. How do you input anything like code quickly on such a tiny screen?
In DS9, once Jake Sisko gets into writing he's often seen using his PADD with a stylus. It is possible to enter text without the stylus using the controls at the bottom (Bashir enters "GO AWAY" for Dax in one episode when she interrupts him flirting with someone else), but it's apparently cumbersome enough that it's not normally used like that.
how much code do you enter into a mobile device? these aren't the devices to do that with. they just run apps that serve the purpose at hand dictated by the script.
when ever you want to send a text, you don't enter the code for that. neither did anyone on an away team that needed to take air samples, or scan someone's health.
> neither did anyone on an away team that needed to take air samples, or scan someone's health.
You're thinking of tricorders[0], GP is talking about PADDs[1]. Tricorders are mostly read-only sensors that need to be pre-configured (with some ability to switch between configurations during use), while PADDs are basically modern tablets with some physical inputs around the screen.