Ask HN: Does anyone review code on their iPad/tablet? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Does anyone review code on their iPad/tablet?

9 pointsfatso78410 comments

A colleague and I just had a conversation about this --whether people peruse code, maybe even for review, on their tablet devices. Do any of you actually do this, and if so, how do you peruse code on a tablet?

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I have the GitHub app on my iPad, and at time will review (smaller PR's) from my tablet while not at my desk. Its fine, but for larger PR's or PR's I need to leave more longer more in-depth comments on I will go back to my desk. Maybe I could carry small bluetooth keyboard, but at that point I might as well just undock my laptop.

I have worked from iPad + Raspberry Pi 400 setup exclusively for two weeks as an experiment.

I usually ran code-server on the Raspberry Pi and connected to it from the iPad to read and write code, but I found GitLab’s built-in Web IDE to be quite usable too (it’s based on code too afaik).

As for reading code for review purposes — if you don’t need to compare it locally, and built in Merge/Pull Request review of GitLab/GitHub/etc are enough, experience on iPad isn’t much different from desktop.

Doing all of this without a physical keyboard makes it much more painful though.

TL;DR: use GitHub/GitLab’s web interfaces, have a physical keyboard.

I use a Kindle. Not very often, but sometimes I put some code in a .pdf on the Kindle when I'm trying to work through somebody else's code.

Light bedtime reading. <grin>

At bedtime, there's no deadline pressure to stop you working through small points carefully. And then there's the subconscious factor, where your brain will keep working gently on your problem overnight. And allow you to have a 'sudden insight' at some later time.

I would definitely not bother with an iPad (like, why?) but I do this pretty continually on my iPhone. I even do a bunch of code editing on my iPhone! I mostly use ssh to a server with bash/git/vim, but I've also been know to "slum it" and use the horrifyingly-limited UI provided by GitHub to browse code.

I presume the reason why would be that some want to do the same as you've described except on a larger screen, no?

Oh, I guess maybe on the Mini? I figure if I'm going to use an iPad for something that would be easier with a keyboard I might as well use a MacBook as they are pretty much the same size.

I got a kindle scribe for my birthday a couple months ago, and have found its much more friendly to read code with than kindles have traditionally been. So I'm reading a lot more technical literature there, usually in the form of a PDF which allows me to annotate directly on the page.

I wouldn't do code reviews a la Github because the web browser is utter shit (sorry, if anyone reading this has worked on it—i love the rest of the product!) and obviously there's no app for it.

I sometimes review code on my phone, because a) I could never think of a use case for an iPad in my daily life and b) a tablet is kinda unwieldy to grab every time you go to the loo.

Granted, it's usually just web stuff, nothing too complicated.

Ok, I lied. Sometimes it's cafeteria and not the bathroom.

Yes! I often do code reviews on my mobile devices (iPhone, iPad) through the GitHub mobile app

Why do you need this pain?

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