Android device as dev machine

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.spartacusrex.spartacuside

by 6ren • 15 years ago

77 33 15 years ago

market.android.com

cryptoz4• 15 years ago

Oh this looks awesome! I am so excited for the future of developing on Android, with hardware keyboards and devices like the Transformer Prime. I can't wait to try this out. The idea of carrying around just a tablet and being able to write Android applications on the fly is just too cool.

I wonder how far we are from a total replacement of old desktop operating systems in the mainstream, even for developers? I'm aware they're not going away since there will be millions and millions that cling to them. But they may become specialty cases, not sold on computers in stores, etc.

fredley• 15 years ago

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. The idea of developing on anything without a fullsize keyboard makes me nauseous just thinking about it.

Handy for tweaking something on the go, but developing projects (especially in such verbose languages) on a pocket-sized device would be incredibly painful.

I'd be interested to see how this works on a laptop-ish Android device though.

cryptoz4• 15 years ago

Not sarcastic at all. I'd never imagine developing anything on a pocket-sized device either! I'm referring exclusively to tablets with full size keyboards. I have a Xoom and the wireless keyboard, and it's pretty nice to use to write HTML/Javascript but it's a tad slow.

Also, note that I was referring specifically to the future. Android tablets have existed for about 11 months now. I'm thinking maybe 2-3 years down the road, what will they look like? Surely they'll be good enough for real software development! Especially the ones with keyboards, video out, etc. The new Transformer Prime is quad-core and all, so we're not lacking in horsepower here.

I'm not really concerned or even really thinking about the hardware - I'm excited to see what new paradigms or workflows may develop when coding on an OS like Android.

Edit: Already, user-perspective things like "saving a file" are long-gone. Will that happen in IDEs of the future, too? Will version control become even less intrusive? How will it happen? What about code completion? What does the touch interface offer in terms of giving context to code? Etc...

stonemetal• 15 years ago

on a pocket-sized device The transformer prime mentioned by the OP is a 10 inch tablet with attachable keyboard, you must have some rather large pockets. Though I rather agree, the keyboard seems a bit small for primary use.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure there will be some 11.6" and maybe even some 13" laptop-like devices this year with Android.

jerf2• 15 years ago

The future is a cell phone that can be plugged into a dock that has a monitor, keyboard, mouse, other sound, additional power, possibly additional cooling, etc. None of this is a particularly far-out projection, either, as USB pretty much does everything necessary to enable that, it just hasn't quite been done. (Close, though. There are existing Android cell phone/laptop hybrid thingies, and they will only develop further in this direction.) Specialists may use laptops or desktops for various high-powered computing needs, but it would no longer be the common case.

Unfortunately, the cell phone in the cell phone is really hobbling the whole process, because that attaches the future of computing to the whims of the cell phone companies. That dependency needs to go.

jsnell2• 15 years ago

I tried using an Eee Transformer as my primary computer for two weeks. It was just about tolerable for casual usage, but had the amount of holes in basic functionality was pretty shocking. E.g. I never realized how many Google Docs spreadsheets I actually deal with weekly, and how totally crippled Docs is on Android. It doesn't help that Android apps are really not designed with keyboards in mind, or that the trackpad support is a joke. Using a touchscreen in a laptop configuration turns out not to be very comfortable.

It was intolerable for development even with an Ubuntu install to chroot into.

Basically the whole tablet + keyboard form factor looks cool but is useless in practice with Android. I hope the situation improves in the future, but don't really expect it given how tiny part of the whole Android ecosystem these devices are.

caller9• 15 years ago

"Also vim has been setup by default in a humane way (arrow keys work, backspace..), so that starting on this long and glorious journey won't begin with a punch in the face."

Awesome.

kruhft2• 15 years ago

What would be more awesome would be including emacs as well.

Cieplak• 15 years ago

At first I read this as 'Emacs would be better than Vim' but that's not what you're saying at all

Yes, the awesomeness would be through the roof, having Vim AND Emacs on a tablet (but only with a full size keyboard with a Caps-Lock that could be mapped to Ctrl :)

jsnell2• 15 years ago

I had been wondering about why there were no editors with Emacs keybindings around, and it turns out that the reason is that they just wouldn't work very well.

The Android keyboard event model has horrible handling of modifier keys. Basically it's a total crap-shoot whether a chord is passed through to the application or silently eaten. So you might e.g. get events for something very simple like Ctrl-A, but not Ctrl-Space or. Meta-Left.

And even rooting your device and editing the key mapping files to specify outputs for these chords doesn't necessarily make them available to the app. I haven't dug too much into why. If anyone knows, I'd love to know.

mlntn• 15 years ago

Pretty cool and I almost installed it before I noticed it was the largest filesize (31MB) of any Android app I've ever seen.

bogdand• 15 years ago

I gave it a try, and it's great. Love the keyboard and vim :)

dkokelley• 15 years ago

It compiles to over 100MB according to the description. If you have the memory, I would try it out anyways.

vinsanda• 15 years ago

It's great application, last couple of days I was searching to change the hosts file to test localhost mobile web app. But it was difficult to root access and push the host file to the android system. Anyway this may help to all the things.

hack_edu2• 15 years ago

Can someone point me to an IDE as awesome as this but for iOS? This will go on my phone, but I want something awesome like this for my iPad!

pvarangot• 15 years ago

I'm not completely sure since I have no experience with almost nothing made by Apple, but I think the terms of service of the iOS App Store disallow compilers/interpreters. Also, you can't run unsigned binaries.

If I'm accurate, both of the aforementioned policies are sort of showstoppers for an IDE, except maybe for jailbroken devices.

hack_edu2• 15 years ago

Yeah, I was worried about that. Such a shame; Apple's the only one losing out on the opportunity. Codea rocks, but I'd like to see a more useful editor. Even without a real compiler or debugger.

jimrandomh• 15 years ago

This is awesome! What I'd like to see added next, I think, is gcc - I'd like to bootstrap from there to a package manager to installing all the other tools I'm used to having in a command line environment. Vim, bash and javac are nice, but I can't use it to work on my existing projects unless I can compile their dependencies.

clvv• 15 years ago

The problem is the lack of an efficient input method. I personally haven't come across any good soft full keyboard. And special keys won't work on bluetooth keyboards on old Android versions. I personally do not have a ICS device yet, but I think it's definitely possible to develope on ICS if the input problem is solved.

Karellen• 15 years ago

Is there any android hardware out that could make good use of this?

I'm thinking a phone with a mini-HDMI port, so whereever I go I can just connect it to any real monitor which is to hand. If the thing can act as a USB host, add in a micro-USB to full-USB dongle, and I can connect a real keyboard and mouse too.

What'd be even nicer would be a deck-of-cards sized "docking station", which could have 4 full USB ports (keyboard, mouse, thumb drive, spare), VGA out, and wired ethernet.

Android device as dev machine

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