blog: add first draft of coding on an iPad
Mostly stream of consciousness first draft material. Please rip this to shreds.
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title: Coding on an iPad
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date: 2018-04-14
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# Coding on an iPad
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As people find out, I am an avid user of Emacs for a lot of my professional and
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personal coding. I have things set up such that the center of my development
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environment is a shell (eshell), and most of my interactions are with emacs
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buffers from there. Recently when I purchased my iPad Pro (10.5", 512 GB, LTE,
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with Pencil and Smart Keyboard) I was very surprised to find out that there was
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such a large group of people who did a lot of their professional work from an
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iPad.
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The iPad is a remarkably capable device in its own right, even without the apps
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that let me do things like commit to git or edit text files in git repos. Out
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of the gate, if I did not work in a primarily code-focused industry, I am
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certain that I could use an iPad for all of my work tasks and I would be more
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than happy with it. With just Notes, iWork and the other built-in apps even,
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you can do literally anything a consumer would want out of a computing device.
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As things get more complicated though, you begin to want to be able to do
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things like write code from it. My Macbook died recently, and as such I've
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taken the time to try to get to learn how the iPad workflow is a little more
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hands-on (this post is being written from my iPad even).
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So far I have written the following projects either mostly or completely from
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this iPad:
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- https://github.com/withinsoft/ventriloquist
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- https://github.com/Xe/arrival
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- https://git.xeserv.us/xena/register
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- https://github.com/Xe/when-then-zen (more on this in another blogpost)
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I seem to have naturally developed two basic workflows for developing from this
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iPad: my "traditional" way of ssh-ing into a remote server via [Prompt][prompt]
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and then using emacs inside tmux and the local way of using [Texastic][texastic]
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for editing text and then [Working Copy][workingcopy] to interact with Git
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along with [Workflow][workflow] and some custom JSON HTTP services to allow me
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to hack things together as needed.
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## The Traditional Way
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Honestly, there's not much exciting here, thankfully. The only interesting
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thing in this regard (besides the lack of curses mouse support REALLY being
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apparent given the fact that the entire device is a screen) is that the lack
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of the escape key on the smart keyboard means I need to hit command-grave
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instead. This has been fairly easy to remap my brain to, the fact that the
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iPad keyboard lacks the room for a touchpad seems to be enough to give my brain
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a hint that I need to hit that instead of escape.
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This feels like developing on any other device, just this device is much more
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portable and I can't test changes locally. It enforces you keeping all of your
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active project in development in the cloud. With this workflow, you can
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literally stop what you were doing on your desktop, then resume it on the iPad
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at Taco Bell. A friend of mine linked [his blogpost on his cloud-based workflow][ceruleiscloud]
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and this iPad driven development feels like a nice natural extension to it.
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It's the tools I know and love, just available when and wherever I am thanks to
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the LTE.
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## iPad-local Development
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This surprised me just about as much as this header is surpsing you to read it.
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Apple has done a phenomenal job at setting up a secure device. It is hard to
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run arbitrary unsigned code on it.
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However, development is more than just running the code, development is also
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writing the code. For writing the code, I've been loving Texastic and Working
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Copy:
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Texastic is pretty exciting. It's a simple text editor, but it also supports
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reading both arbitrary files from the iCloud drive and arbitrary files from
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programs like Working Copy. In order to open a file up in Texastic, I
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navigate over to it in Working Copy and then hit the "Share" button and tap
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on "Open in Texastic". By default this option is pretty deep down the menu, so
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I have moved it all the way up to the beginning of the list. Then I literally
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just type stuff in and every so often the changes get saved back to Working
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Copy. Then I commit when I'm done and push the code away.
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This is almost precisely my existing workflow with the shell, just with
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Working Copy and Texastic instead.
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There are downsides to this though. The inability to test your code as
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effortlessly as it is to write it quickly becomes frustrating unless you have
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CI set up and people don't care about a larger commit history (or if you rebase
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changes onto master when merging). There is no code completion, gofmt or
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goimports. There doesn't seem to be any advanced manipulation or linting tools
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available for Texastic either. I understand that there are fundamental
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limitations involved when developing these kinds of mobile apps, but I wish
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there was something I could set up on a server of mine that would let me at
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least get some linting or formatting tooling running for this.
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Workflow is very promising, but at the time of writing this article I haven't
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really had the time to fully grok it yet. So far I have some glue that lets me
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do things like share URL's/articles to a Discord chatroom via a webhook (the
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iPad Discord client causes an amazing amount of battery life reduction for me),
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find the currently playing song on Apple Music on Youtube, copy an article into
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my Notes, turn the currently active thing into a PDF and some more that I've
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been picking up and tinkering with as things go on.
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There are some limitations in Workflow as far as I've seen. I don't seem to be
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able to log arbitrary health events like mindfulness meditation into Workflow.
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I was kinda hoping that Workflow would let me do that, I've been wanting to log
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my mindfulness time with the Health app, but I can't find an app that acts as a
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dumb timer without an account for web synching. I'd love to have a few quick
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action workflows for doing things like logging 10 minutes of anapana, metta or
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a half hour of more focused work.
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## Conclusion
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The iPad is a fantastic developer box given its limitations. If you just want
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to get the code or blogpost out, this device will help you focus into the task
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at hand (literally) and just hammer out the functionality. You just need to get
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the idea and then you just act on it.
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You just do thing and it does thing.
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[prompt]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prompt-2/id917437289?mt=8
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[texastic]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textastic-code-editor-6/id1049254261?mt=8
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[workingcopy]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/working-copy/id896694807?mt=8
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[workflow]: https://www.workflow.is
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[ceruleiscloud]: https://elliot.pro/blog/working-in-the-cloud.html
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