Show HN: Binary, a cloud development environment on the iPad | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Binary, a cloud development environment on the iPad

thebinaryapp.com

78 pointsdshankar38 comments

Cool, looks well done but pick a more distinctive name. Using a general computing word like "Binary" is just going to cause confusion. And in this case it doesn't even really make a ton of sense.

Maybe name it after a cloud type, eg. Cumulus, Stratus, Cirrus

Good suggestions :) thank you!

Why would you want to write code on a tablet? What happened to »the right tools for the job«?

He answers this in the section titled "Why I Created Binary" on the web page.

Thanks gjritter.

danbruc - there are instances where an iPad is more convenient than a laptop. Also, this is more than just a text editor for the iPad. The cloud development part plays an important role.

Yes, I read that. What I was up to is how painful this makes development. Even developing on a laptop is utterly painful - single small screen, no mouse, no real keyboard. It is probably nice to look at the sea while developing but it is not productive.

Why are you judging someone else's productivity methods?

Good developers write apps to scratch their own itches, and this seems to be a laudable example, whether it scratches your itch or not.

If you see a craftsman trying to drive a screw into a board using a hammer wouldn't you wonder why he doesn't just use screwdriver?

Sure... but a laptop is exactly the right tool for the kind of stuff I work on at present. Don't need multiple screens or fancy mice. Do need something I can easily carry. As and when I need more, I'll get it.

Your comment demonstrates the subjectiveness of the "right tool". I personally have no problem coding on a laptop, and even find myself more productive with the MBP's trackpad than a mouse. While I don't like working on the iPad, I can imagine somebody having as different an opinion on that as between your opinion on laptops and mine.

> Even developing on a laptop is utterly painful - single small screen, no mouse, no real keyboard. It is probably nice to look at the sea while developing but it is not productive.

I think what you meant to say was "but I'm not productive this way." Clearly many developers are more than productive without a big screen/multiple screens, mice, and external keyboards. And as someone who has been shipping for several years with nothing but a 13" screen, I'm definitely one of them.

In fact I'd argue the ability for me to be totally mobile and work from wherever I want, whenever I want, makes me _more_ productive than being tethered to a monolithic workstation. There's a lot more "oh hey, that code I wrote last night kinda sucks, let me fix it before I hop in the shower" and a lot less "oh I should probably get around to fixing that thing when I get to my workstation."

This comment is a bummer. The righteousness of a tool is very subjective, and I think we learn a lot from experimenting and pushing platforms past knee-jerk limits to see what happens.

Also, see my answer in a neighbouring comment.

I think, ultimately, it relates to how you approach code. Coding on the iPad is a kind of relaxation/holiday thing for me, but coding on the MBA is more of a working-at-my-desk thing.

That probably doesn't make much sense to other people, but there's a fair few that agree, e.g. http://yieldthought.com/post/31857050698/ipad-linode-1-year-...

After reading the linked article I am a bit puzzled. I am absolutely unable to imagine how you can work with a codebase of 1.000.000+ lines using an iPad and Vim. 1.000.000 lines. That is on the order of 50 developers spitting out code for 5 years.

The largest projects I have worked on are an order of magnitude smaller and even for this size I am unable to imagine how you could replace working on a solution with 50 projects in Visual Studio with just using Vim.

Not to mention coordinating 10, 20 or 50 developers if everybody is sitting under different trees. At least for me given my experience in developing software this makes absolutely no sense.

Tangential question, not intended to the poo-poo this, which I think is great, but more of an information query: Do people actually find this better than upgrading your phone to do tethering and using an ultra book?

I attempted to use my iPad in exactly the way he described, and it was largely unsuccessful after about a week honeymoon period. I didn't even have that many requirements. SSH plus a web browser was sufficient.

The main issues I had related to the glossy iPad display, the crappy keyboard support (not all control keys supported), detached keyboard making lap use... awkward, and pointing to things on the screen (for cut and paste or rdp use) was tedious. Almost all of which were solvable in some indirect way, but kind of made the exercise pointless if you have the money to spend on an ultrabook.

While this may be fun, all of the "why" points are better satisfied with a macbook air. As good battery life, if not better with new machines.

I'd have thought the same until I recently went on holiday. Bringing my high spec MBA seemed like a really bad idea, so I bought a new bluetooth keyboard and took the iPad instead. It took me a while to get Koder and Firebug working properly, but in the end having a light device in my compact messenger bag was so much better than I was expecting. Really enjoyed it.

Korder has a lot of issues though, and many of them seemed to be solved by Binary.

I'm definitely curious about this. One project I've been looking at doing was building an iPad-optimized version of an R IDE (RStudio or something like it) backed by EC2.

right.. good luck doing a search for that..

This looks great. I'm a bit skeptical but very excited to do iOS dev on my iPad mini!

Hi! Creator of Binary here - I plan on adding support for the iPad mini and (hopefully) Android tablets this fall.

Clearly you will be compared to Diet Coda and others. Can you speak about your differentiator. I'm always interested in carrying less hardware so what you say is important to me.

Lots of (big) differences. For example, you can write Objective C code for iOS apps in the Binary editor, the code compiles on the Binary platform, and the compiled app is returned to your iPad home screen.

Wait a minute: you’re launching a new app which has support for iPad but not for iPad mini? How is that even possible, they both have the same (effective) resolution.

> and I wanted my iOS apps to be compiled, shipped over-the-air, and installed on my home screen for instant testing

How is the compiling online and installing on the home screen achieved?

Thanks for asking!

Binary compiles your iOS apps on our remote OS X machines, and the compiled binaries are shipped over-the-air using Apple's Wireless Enterprise app distribution. The distribution mechanism operates the same way as Testflight (the iOS beta testing service).

Is there any pricing information available? I imagine there will be a subscription service required for the cloud compiling.

I'm not sure yet, but I think the app will be free. Text editing is free, and $10-20/month for remote compiling. What do you think?

It really depends on how well everything works but that seems reasonable even for part time use. I like to compile a lot while i'm coding and I typically make heavy use of the simulator so i'm still a bit skeptical. Looking forward to trying it out though.

Makes me think: why don't they just start shipping macbook airs with 4G.

The app looks great though. Been wanting something like this for a long time.

I believe it's due to the metal case and the antenna. Apparently Apple have looked at it for a long time - there's even a MBP prototype with a stupid-looking external antenna somewhere... I think I saw it on eBay

Looks interesting. The "Get Binary" link doesn't work though. I was expecting it to open the App Store, but then I saw the email form at the bottom. It should link to that section.

Man, with git support it looks just perfect.

The signup form isn't working for me in the latest Firefox. I click the submit button and nothing happens...

That's odd! Could you please email me? dnshankar + gmail.com

"Your code, images, and other files get synced to our cloud servers."

That kills it for me.

My cloud dev env: Linode + Tmux + Emacs

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