I’d even be happy if more love was paid to “desktop light” environments. I have an iPad Pro that’s useless for software development without SSHing into a machine.
I would hate to have to use a touch interface to write code.
What I’m talking about is replacing the latter with something that is not just essentially a text string. Maybe one way to think about it is when you are coding in visual studio with a language that has good IntelliSense, it will pop up with various class members and other details because it understands the objects you are working with. Maybe there’s a way to extend that idea, where there’s not much manual typing involved at all and it’s mostly tapping on the option you want based on what is relevant in the current scope.
Microsoft had a labs project 5 or 10 years ago attempting to do just this, although it never really got very far before it was canceled. I wish I could remember the name of it now, it was intriguing. Definitely not as productive as coding via a keyboard on a real computer, but it was the best experience you could get on a mobile device, so that’s not nothing.
Maybe the real problem is there’s no way to actually run/use anything you create on mobile. Sure maybe if you’re making a website, but there’s no way to build an app or a helper function that can be used directly on an iPhone or iPad. I assume android has more possibilities here, but I still have yet to see something that will compile code on an android device directly to an APK and install it locally without requiring some sort of server to do the heavy lifting.
It’s interesting to see the communities growing around iOS shortcuts. It’s crazy the amount of hoops people are willing to jump through to create shortcuts that would otherwise be fairly simple scripts in a standard programming language, and then people share them on Reddit communities and elsewhere. If people are willing to bend over backwards for that, just think what a purpose-built system could be used for.
There are many visual programming environments targetting different domains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language#Li...
The biggest issue is that visual programming environments tend to be domain-specific rather than general purpose. A general purpose visual programming environment would be difficult to build and still be as capable as a software developer using one of the mainstream programming languages with IDE.
It had a cool keyboard that would only show words that are syntactically valid for the cursor position.
It probably would need some alterations for a real language, but it's a lot better than just a qwerty keyboard
And even that is a horrible experience because the iPad keyboard doesn’t allow key repeat, making vim a terrible experience. That used to be an issue anyway. Maybe they’ve fixed it.
I’ve never actually used an external keyboard on iOS so I can’t vouch for how well it works, but judging from the settings pane it should do what you want
All the terminals I have used swap out the suggestions bar for a row of extra keys, with escape in the place you would expect it.
https://www.apple.com/shop/ipad/ipad-accessories/keyboards
I just learned you can type command-. to send an escape on an iPad keyboard. And also as freehunter mentioned, iPad Settings / General / Keyboard / Hardware Keyboard / Modifier Keys lets you remap caps lock to escape.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/04/23/ipad-pro-magic-keyboard-escap...
Isn't Vim the editor with the least reliance upon key repeat? Hardcore Vimmers would argue if you are using key repeat, you're doing it wrong.
What do you use key repeat for in Vim?