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Comment by moconnor | Hacker News Reader

OP here, I'm happy to answer any more technically detailed questions; I had to cut a lot out of the blog post!

First of all, thanks for writing about your experiences! This was an inspiration for me when attempting to do something similar on a Transformer Prime. Unfortunately the Asus keyboard wasn't good enough, and that fell into misuse.

However, this has prompted me to re-evaluate what I need on my work computer. Essentially, there are only three things I actually run: vim, Vagrant and a browser.

This means that when the lease period on my current Air ends in February I will have a lot of freedom to choose my next "workstation". Theoretically it could be any small-and-light laptop, or maybe even something like iPad or Surface. Though even with the little requirements I have, I'm not so keen to go Windows...

Oh, and an actual question: I do quite a lot of front-end development (see for instance http://createjs.org/ ). One thing that mobile browsers lack is access to proper inspectors and JavaScript consoles. Any ideas on that?

Well, I plan to use a Surface as a client but my development will stil be on Linux, of course. The whole no-browsers-except-IE-on-a-surface might be a real killer for anyone doing web development though.

True of iPad as well, no? I'm still confused about the Windows RT / IE rule. I remember that they put special provisions for browsers to have elevated rights. Then I remember 3rd party browsers not being allowed on the "desktop" of RT, and then there is some suggestion that they won't be allowed to JIT even within Metro. There's been enough conflicting stories that I really want a detailed summary from someone at Microsoft or Mozilla on what is and is not allowed.

I thought I saw Chrome & Firefox doing Windows 8-style apps?

The last I heard of this is that the Metro versions of the different browsers can run on Intel-based Windows 8 devices, but not on ARM-powered Windows RT.

This is a shame. Firefox is great on Android.

If you get a Surface Pro, you could run any browser you want, Firebug and even Linux natively. You'd be giving up on some of the battery life, weight, thickness and price over the RT version though.

"One thing that mobile browsers lack is access to proper inspectors and JavaScript consoles. Any ideas on that?"

When you have to, can't you VNC to a machine with proper inspectors and consoles?

I don't ipad exclusively, nor do I front end very much, but whenever ssh or run-a-client-on-the-ipad fails me, VNC usually is the solution. I guess rdesktop works too. Given a decent xserver on the ipad I could do a few more things.

While I am on board with the Linode, I can't imagine coding on something that small. As it is, I have vim on 1920x1080 and a full tmux on the other screen. How did you get used to seeing so much less code at one time?

I use a fairly large font because readability is important to me, so I get something like 85 x 60 characters on the screen. Width-wise, that's fine (and I set Vim to wrap long lines anyway). I also would have thought I'd miss that wider overview, but somehow I don't. I've become quite proficient with vim's navigation and movement commands - perhaps that helps a lot. I sometimes code on a 1600x1080 monitor with at least 6 times as many characters on the screen, but I don't notice the difference any more.

Except: when merging changes. Then I really want the screen divided into 4 sections, and the iPad is too small to do that comfortably.

That said, I've noticed a trend in my coding style to prefer conciseness and locality. This may be a subconscious reaction to the smaller viewport I'm using.

What is your average latency to your server? What is the maximum tolerable latency you can continue working normally? Do you use tools like mosh?

I use vanilla SSH and GNU screen. I have a ping of 150ms to my Linode at the moment and that's absolutely fine. I think above 300 it starts to get a bit hairy. The Vim movement commands are extremely tolerant of a laggy connection, which helps with perception a lot, I think.

Mosh (http://mosh.mit.edu/) could probably improve experience a bit for high latency and/or dodgy connection. Unfortunately, there's no iOS client (yet - https://github.com/keithw/mosh/issues/198). iSSH seems to have it on its roadmap though - http://www.zinger-soft.com/iSSH_features.html.

I started using this after you posted this. I'm Australian (WA) and working over SSH to servers in the US with 230-260ms this tool has changed everything. Very, very nice.

Did/would you consider a tablet(/netbook) running linux instead, /why? ..do you use the touch interface much, above and beyond basic clicking?

Not really. You could certainly do the same with one of those and connecting through to a remote server. A netbook without a remote server wouldnt' be powerful enough for my work.

Once you've got a quad core server doing the heavy lifting, why not use an iPad for the interface? It doubles as a fantastic entertainment device and looks great too.

>why not use an iPad for the interface?

Well, i was trying to get at what benefits you thought the iPad gave you (other than ease of setup, and being a great content consumption device).

(While I don't know exactly what you do) you would probably still need a remote server, but Linux would give you a much more mature development platform, with many IDEs including the light table that you mentioned you missed.. with this and a proper shell you would be able to at least do some proper work with no data connection. And still keep the battery life courtesy of ARM.

How can I get a job where my boss will let me wander Munich? I'm a desk slave right now.

Join a startup as the 3rd employee and spend the next decade building their software from the ground up to a profitable product that leads in its field.

Then move to Germany.

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