Developing on a tablet

[James Cat]

On a long boring train journey one time I installed a text editor and put together a simple backbone app on my android phone, a nexus 4. I had to install a custom keyboard but it was possible, if not a little painful.

I was thinking of buying a tablet and was wondering if anyone had used a tablet to develop html5 based games/apps, and if they have any advice or recommendations.

Cheers

JC

[CodedGames]

I'd suggest a Windows 8 tablet simply because it would be running full windows.

[ozdy]

Just get the cheapest netbook, I can't imagine developing on a tablet - a tiny screen where the keyboard takes up half of it? - no thanks

[James Cat]

Thanks both.

 

I've used a cheapo netbook for years, got an acer aspire one, thing is it doesn't do webgl.

 

it would be neat to have something touch screen, as that's my target 'platform' so I wouldn't need to switch devices.

 

and I've heard good things about cloud9 cloud based ide too, with github integration, perhaps it might be doable to have a kind of personal CI pipeline so you can just use whatever device you have as long as it can run a browser.

 

not for eveyone I  bet, but I did see someone in the local library with a pretty cool bluetooth keyboard + nexus 10 setup.

 

but yeah, inconclusive as yet....

[CodedGames]

Don't forget Windows tablets will support pretty much any USB keyboard/mouse so if you wanted to use an actual keyboard/mouse you could.

[plicatibu]

I second ozdy. Tablets are terrible for developing. I netbook is much better.

 

You probably have a mobile phone with Android, iPhone or Windows Phone 8. Insert an Bluetooth dongle into your netbook and when you get reach a point where you need to test it just transfer it throw Bluetooth.

 

Believe me, your fingers will thank you.

[James Cat]

cool. this might seem a bit lazy (it is!) ...but possibly also for the benefit of other forum readers... is there any netbooks that you (or anyone reading) can recommend, requirements are good battery life and decent capability in WebGL... ?

thanks for any input. :-)

 

JC

[dev]

Consider a chromebook, should be quite cheap, light with decent battery power suitable for writing JS. Can of course also install linux on it. (get one with an intel chip preferably).

 

Although if you want to do 'the works' (e.g. also run something like photoshop) I'd either do that on a cheap desktop when you're at home, or invest in a macbook (the nice thing about them is that they tend to 'hold value' quite well. You can buy a Macbook for $1500, use it for two years and still get $750 for it, meaning you paid about $30 a month, which is really very little money for the principal cost of your business) or an ultrabook.

 

I personally tend to prefer cheap powerful desktops at the (home) office combined with something like a Nexus 7 to do email, reading, research etc while on the road. It really depends on your life though, I don't spend 3 hours in trains a day like I used to. 

 

As for developing on a tablet... there's no real elegant coding environment out there, yet. I streamed my PC to my iPad once, it was smooth but just a huge headache to write any real code. And when you start adding bluetooth keyboards and such, you might as well get a chromebook in my opinion. You can get a much better JS development environment on a $300 chromebook than on a $700 ipad. Add something like nitrous.io and you're golden.