navoshta

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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).

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.

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

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).

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

(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!