{"id":39992,"date":"2023-07-07T14:14:30","date_gmt":"2023-07-07T18:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=39992"},"modified":"2023-07-10T13:00:10","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T17:00:10","slug":"ipad-pro-for-coding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/07\/ipad-pro-for-coding\/","title":{"rendered":"iPad Pro for Coding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesse Peterman<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

The #1 reason I started to consider buying an iPad a few years ago was for one thing, and one thing only: to read coding books. I have a kindle and I love it, but for coding books it is terrible. The large color screen especially comes in handy with code snippets as well as for color syntax highlighting.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, the best uses I’ve found for my iPad are reading books\/papers that don’t fit well on a Kindle and watching videos. It seems like I’m not really taking advantage of what the hardware and software can do, though I do use multitasking with OmniFocus.<\/p>\n

The #2 reason I considered the iPad was because Apple had announced at WWDC 2021 that their Swift Playgrounds app would be updated to support SwiftUI and be able to release complete iOS apps on Apple’s AppStore.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

If you’re just learning Swift in Swift Playgrounds then sure, you can use it for coding, but you could also do the same thing with the base model iPad for a fraction of the cost.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

After buying a powerful pro model, a decent keyboard, and a pencil the price ended up being MORE than a laptop I could have used for even more coding activities.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

The keyboard shortcuts and operating system aren’t quite as power-user friendly as I would prefer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The MacBook Air is so good these days. For most use cases, it’s more capable, it weighs less despite having a larger screen and a full keyboard, and it costs less, too. If you’re choosing one or the other, it’s the better choice unless you really need something only iPad can do.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n