Show HN: iPad app to help you learn computational science by tinkering with code | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: iPad app to help you learn computational science by tinkering with code

tinkerstellar.com

121 pointsnavoshta32 comments

(Full disclosure: I'm the app developer)

I'm looking for beta testers for my new app Tinkerstellar, it is similar in concept to Apple’s own Swift Playgrounds, but for Python and computational science. Essentially, it’s a collection of interactive tutorials, where you can edit and run code examples straight away — no need to configure environments, download datasets, or rely on networking connection. I refer to these tutorials as labs, and the app is called Tinkerstellar — because you learn by tinkering with things!

Such posts might fit "Show HN", see https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

Thank you! Apologies, I'm somewhat new to HN.

You may want to consider allowing people to register to be notified after beta when its GA. There’s probably a decent number of people who are interested but for whom signing up for TestFlight is too much friction.

Great idea, I'll add a link to newsletter on the landing page — thank you!

This is really nice. Congrats on the release!

How are you running Python on the client? Is it Pyodide or something else?

I see from comments below that you also created juno.sh which also looks great. May I ask what your users have been using it for primarily? Is it for learning or for doing? The reason I ask is that I'm wondering if the hardware limitations of an iOS device have been limiting for folks "doing" vs. "learning"? Sometimes I find even my 64GB TR1950X rig here with an NVIDIA RTX2080 limiting :)

Thank you! Both Tinkerstellar and Juno embed a Python interpreter built for iOS from CPython, no WebAssembly.

As per what people use Juno for — great question! I think it's a combination of both, but leaning towards learning (hence I had an idea to launch Tinkerstellar). The hardware is somewhat limiting, but I think it's the iPadOS that is the primary limiting factor here. That said, according to feedback I hear Juno is still great for prototyping and drafting something quickly, not just for learning — and some people absolutely do use it for serious work.

Thanks great to know that folks can get work done on an iPad too.

What is it about iPadOS that's limiting for juno.sh? The difficulty in putting two apps side by side (I still need to Google how to do it on my 11" iPad Pro running iOS 14.7.1!) or something else?

The limitations are more on the under-the-hood side of things, e.g. you can't link any compiled code after you submit the app to the App Store — which means no way of letting the user install arbitrary packages (something a Python IDE could definitely use!). Also very aggressive OS behaviour when it comes to handling computational resources wrt 3rd party apps, it's things like that.

I think this is really neat and I also like the HN tagline "learn computational science by tinkering with code" better than learning how to code and Data Science for Middle/High Schoolers.

I've been wanting to see something like this for a long time & think it's pretty neat!

When are you planning to release it approx?

Not sure to be honest, probably later this year (depending on how beta testing goes).

This is something I’m interested in, but I can’t tell if I need a physical keyboard for this. It’s a coding app so it makes me think there’s going to be a lot of typing involved, but it’s also an iPad app and I imagine you wouldn’t want a keyboard to be a barrier of entry to use the app?

Isn't that just up to whether or not you want to use a physical keyboard or not? Why would the app make it a hard requirement?

Tinkerstellar works beautifully with hardware keyboards and trackpads, but you certainly don't need one to use the app. Labs already have all the necessary code in them — so you can simply run it and see what each code snippet does. But you can also edit the code and see how output changes, and the stock on-screen keyboard should work well for that (I've added an extra row of Python specific keys to it, btw).

Are there any plans to release a macOS edition, Catalyst or otherwise?

iPad is in heavy rotation in my household. And sitting down with it for 1-2 hours isn't really practical. Even the cats get to play with it.

Yes, certainly. It will likely be an M1 Mac app first, but Catalyst would be the ultimate goal (so that it's available on all Macs, not just those on Apple Silicon).

Would be cool if cats can learn to tinker with code. A whole new generation of cat and mouse games by the actual target audience.

"Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. Please contact administrator for more information."

Any idea why this is?

Interesting! Could you please send a screenshot to contact@tinkerstellar.com? The app does rely on web content for some parts of the interface, but those web resources are loaded locally from device itself, without reaching anywhere outside. Do you have any local proxy configured on your device, or perhaps some restrictions (Screen Time or other) configured?

What will be the pricing model?

The app and content will be available for free when it launches — although I do have plans to add some paid premium labs/content later at some point.

Is there a code to redeem on testflight to able to test it out?

Following this link on your device should work without any code I think: https://testflight.apple.com/join/Z2vhNox7

Got it, thanks!

Are there any plans for a web version?

No immediate plans, but perhaps in the longer term, sure. Right now it works completely autonomously on your iPad.

Why iPad only?

Mac is certainly on the roadmap, and iPhones' screens seem a tad small for something like this to be honest.

Looks neat, I'm all for more accessible programming resources! Be careful not to make it too powerful though, Apple has a mean-streak of shutting down IDEs on iPad.

Thank you! Apple has been merciful to my other app Juno (it's a fully-fledged IDE), at least so far: https://juno.sh

Reply on news.ycombinator.com