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Comment by drej | Hacker News Reader

I was an early adopter, I got an iPad back in the summer of 2010 and have used various models ever since. I've read quite a few of these "replacing a laptop with an iPad" articles and pretty much all of them involve a lot of bending over backwards to make it all work.

I've tried it a few times and it's not just worth it (to me). What I do instead is that I embrace the platform for what it is and don't do any of this remote machine kung fu to mimick a real computer. What I do instead is that I setup applications that sync data through the cloud, so that I can do draft work on my iPad (mostly text, some very light programming), but I never worry about runtimes, compilation etc. Ever since I stopped worrying and just used one of the many text apps (I mostly use iA or Google Keep), I've been much happier - I can focus on text, not on complex workflows.

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Some years ago I read an article through HN by someone who did their programming on an ipad through SSH (and bluetooth mac keyboard) and ditched the laptop. Pictures of croissants in the sun outside in Munich. Got me very inspired. But in the end I decided on a stationary box at work/home, and a MB Air for when not at the desk (or on the sofa). Works great and doesn't weigh much anyway. The main problem with the tablet was that were always things I was missing that I hadn't thought about when moving to iPad. Maybe it'd be better with another brand, but I'm not bothering now.

I read the same article and felt the same way. But, like you, I couldn't get past the "why should I bother doing this when what I do works pretty well and I can autobackup a paranoid extra backup to usb?

Is this the article?

https://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook...

I remember when it came out and a few coworkers at the time had seriously considered swapping to an iPad because of it, but ended up getting MacBook Airs instead.

It’s surprising how 7 years has gone by and using an iPad for development is still facing the same problems.

>using an iPad for development is still facing the same problems.

I don't know if the App Store customizes what it shows people based on the apps they have installed, but for the past few weeks they've been showing me "Get starting with programming" apps and stories on the App Store and it's always the same "Scratch for kids" or "Swift playgrounds" or Udemy videos or something. Apple seems to be pushing programming on an iPad quite hard, but they're not doing anything to make it any easier or more productive. It's weird.

I read that series of articles every now and again because it sells a wonderful dream. The idea of being a highly mobile outdoorsman hacking code across the city is appealing. I also love the single-minded workflow of iOS, only one application is vying for your attention at a single moment. Anything else just pops in to let you know and then pops out. And working on a remote server is awesome, since the hardware doesn't matter anymore. I can bring whatever terminal I need, so I'm not tethered to my desk anymore.

Unfortunately most of my programming is web apps, so while it works for his C++ with long compile times, it doesn't work the same for me.

The one thing I did take from it long term is moving my dev server to the cloud, AWS Cloud9 specifically. I often find myself working on two or three website codebases plus two phone apps, and my personal laptop just doesn't have the RAM or disk space to hold all of that. So I use Cloud9 for the web apps and keep the phone apps on my local machine and it works out pretty well.

To be honest if Cloud9 worked on an iPad I'd probably leave my laptop closed more often.

What are the benefits of this limited, paying cloud system over just RDP to your workstation?

As I mentioned in my original post:

>my personal laptop just doesn't have the RAM or disk space to hold all of that

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