Beautiful iPad code editor concept | Hacker News Reader

Beautiful iPad code editor concept

dribbble.com

39 pointscmelbye38 comments

"concept"? What is new about this? You type in text and it shows up. OK, great.

What the iPad needs for programming is a touch-board for common constructs, because typing is going to be too tedious. Sort of like snippets, but some minimal set that gets you everything you need. Seems difficult, but it would be mildly neat.

Text editors that can't be customized suck, though, and Apple prohibits proper editor customizations. So my guess is that this won't be replacing a $200 netbook with Emacs anytime soon.

Oh, and after you type your code in, what's going to run your code for you?

Heroku needs to bring back its cloud-based code editor, stat.

It's PHP code, so I assume you'd upload it to an FTP server and then test it in an integrated browser (as in Coda and Espresso).

Can someone explain why this is so beautiful or clever?

I guess beauty is subjective.

Or perhaps beauty is hard to gauge when all you have is the corner of a mock-up/screenshot and a few comments.

Or more aptly, why do I care if my text editor is beautiful? Emacs in a black and white, monospaced term window beats TextMate or Coda most of the time. But then, you can't take a pretty picture of usability.

Why the false dichotomy? A black and white editor can be just as usable as a colorful, syntax-highlighted one. Furthermore, it's an extremely subjective judgement.

Where is the dichotomy you speak of? I stated that beauty is largely irrelevant when compared to usability/functionality in a utility such a text editor. Do we expect people to be excited by a photograph of a floral print, paper machete mockup of a sledge hammer or table saw? I'm not saying that a nail gun cannot be both pretty and functional (your accusation), only that a photo of a decorated nail gun is not interesting to someone trying to evaluate it because the photo does not convey any useful information.

Can someone explain why I'd ever want to write code on something without a keyboard when I could get a net book for so cheap? I'm baffled. There are a million great uses for the iPad form factor, but coding isn't one of them.

iPad (Keyboard) dock and/or Bluetooth Keyboard? If you're in to minimalism, a good ssh client and/or editor are all that are needed. Coda on the iPad would make my day.

I guess if you know you'r going to code a lot, you'd take a laptop. OTOH, if you'r somewhere and need to fix a bug (or build your latest greatest invention), and only have an iPad around it's great to have a good online editor.

Hmm... I'm pretty sure that's a fake screenshot (just a mockup). It has all of the same identical invisible marks as Textmate in "Show Invisibles" mode.

Same colorscheme, too.

Granted, I have my vim configured to look almost like TextMate in just this way, so maybe he's just ripping off textmate… somehow I doubt it.

I don't want a beautiful text editor, I want a beautiful terminal emulator and an ssh client. Inconsolata 24pt please.

I also wouldn't mind an app that's a virtual environment with bash, ssh, gIt, sqlite, django, a Safari tab, and Vim. If that existed I would buy an iPad tomorrow.

the terminal.app for jailbroken iphones wasn't that bad. i could fire up emacs and key in complex keyboard shortcuts via programmable gestures.

It looks pretty (although blasdel's comment gives some reasons to take that with a grain of salt), and I'm all for being able to code everywhere and anywhere.

But.

1. I can't open a terminal and run the script.

2. No irb (or ipython or ghci or...) to test-run pieces of code.

3. Until multi-tasking gets going, no music while coding.

I'm not sure it really counts as coding, if you can't run, test or put on some headphones.

"3. Until multi-tasking gets going, no music while coding."

The built in iPod app will, in fact, play music in the background while you do other things.

Thanks for the clarification. I thought you could only play music in the background while using other Apple apps (Safari, Mail, whatever). I'm glad to hear that I'm wrong.

A third party app (Pandora, for instance) can stop the iPod if it wants to, but not all third party apps (Mint) do.

Some games (Civ Revolutions for one) will ask you if you want to keep playing your own music or if you want Civ to play it's music.

Some games just stop the iPod app's music :(

The screenshot shows PHP, and it's conceivable that you could work entirely with remote files by keeping a local copy in sync, so you'd just preview in Safari...

Not that the whole idea appeals to me, but I'm just sayin, if you were on a mission to build some websites on the iPad, you could pull it off...

(Not that you said it was impossible or anything)

You do know that dribbble is an exclusive community for graphic designers to circle-jerk in?

This is almost definitely a photoshop mockup. I doubt it's any more 'under development' than the designs for console games done by twelve-year-old boys on forums everywhere.

You mean like Hackernews, but for designers? ;-)

-runs off to thread where industry X is RETARDED because they don't know anything about computers

(Aww, I'm just kidding you, Hackernews! You know I love you.)

Yes, if Hacker News was invite only and originally secret (it's only been publicly viewable for a month or so) -- with public upvoting, no downvoting anywhere, an explicit popularity contest, no outbound links, and metered posting.

Dribbble is a hugbox. HN is more of a bucket of dicks.

From the comments, it seemed as if development had started, but I'll take that part out of the title just in case.

Good call. We can't afford to give a circle-jerking designer the benefit of the doubt, or do something even more drastic like actually ask him. Anyway, who wants to rate my app?!

It does look like a photoshop mockup, but the comments seem like he's been developing it, at least some.

how practical would it be to bring an ipad + keyboard? that's just like bringing a laptop. the one thing that would be cool (as mentioned later in the thread) is if the keyboard changed based on your language.

Except you can't actually try your code without a server to connect to, because Apple won't approve an app that can run code.

Depending on your use... my ipad is going to and from work with me now instead of my laptop. I've got the iPad Keyboard dock in both places. It's a lot to carry on the road but for normal day to day, with a good ssh client and editor, I'd have even less use for my much loved MBP.

https://squadedit.com/

Thanks for this. For anyone else who didn't know it existed, the languages currently supported (for syntax highlighting and autoindenting) are PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, XML, Lua, SparQL and plain text. Ruby seems to be high on their todo list.

pretty cool, but I just tried it out on my iPad and the actual text-editor part doesn't work (you can't type any text into it).

The chat seems to be working fine though (thank god for that haha)

Squad is a web-based collaborative code editor.

Looks nice.

A designer who can code Objective C/Cocoa? My guess is he's a programmer who designs.

chrisjdavis @tbdr Building it in Obj C so not using bespin, although it is cool. about 3 hours ago in reply to tbdr

That's great news. For teaching programming classes a good code editor (with git functionality included!) and a (ssh) terminal - both with VGA/DVI output (for projection) would be great - currently I still have to use my MacBook Pro for everything, but when I can only use the iPad for presentations and code demos, that would be very nice.

Man talk about the wrong tool for the job!!

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