[HN Gopher] Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code usin...
___________________________________________________________________
Developer wrote 25k lines of Neovim plugin code using phone and
touchscreen
Author : konradkpl
Score : 282 points
Date : 2024-12-10 08:00 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| ksynwa wrote:
| I'm getting a little bit of anxiety just reading about this. I
| hate typing on phone especially if the text haa symbols mixed in.
| I mistype a lot more often on phone and often somehow skip entire
| words. (Don't know what the cause of this is.)
|
| I am guessing they using some specialised keyboard that makes it
| easier to type symbols etc.
| yread wrote:
| Or maybe they spent more time thinking before writing so they
| didn't have to rewrite it so much.
|
| Either way, very painful
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I think best when I'm writing (code) though. It keeps my mind
| focused especially on the task at hand. I've been given
| feedback that I jump too quickly into code, but that's the
| way for me to focus. I would prefer to write a quick
| throwaway prototype as opposed to form some sort of plan or
| document. Otherwise my mind will wonder or I get some sort of
| anxiety.
| Lunar5227 wrote:
| I would guess termux and a bluetooth keyboard perhaps?
| Mwurk wrote:
| He doesn't even use a keyboard: > Minus the keyboard,
| actually.
| konradkpl wrote:
| He posted a recording in which you can see how he works
| https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/216#issuecom...
| stavros wrote:
| Why is there no keyboard on the screen there?
| konradkpl wrote:
| Height of the viewport suggests that onscreen keyboard was
| opened but not recorded. Here is another video where
| keyboard was recorded: https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.
| nvim/issues/216#issuecom...
| stavros wrote:
| Ahh very nice! Can't do that without accurate fingers,
| for sure.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Feeling that anxiety here, too.
|
| There's some okay text editors for Android, Hacker's Keyboard
| (which I still use) and of course Termux. The tools are all
| there, but when I tried to write simple little scripts on
| mobile, it was all the nightmare I thought it would be.
|
| Been using smartphone touchscreens for a decade+ now and still
| feel like an old man that just can't get used to this new-
| fangled way of doing things. You can look back at my comment
| history to see the types of errors my brain, thumbs and far-
| sighted eyes love to produce. I honestly do not know what I was
| thinking when I decided to practice code on these devices, but
| that quickly ended.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Same observation. I don't know how or why, but I seemingly
| words, and I absolutely have to reread what I wrote, and
| usually do updates after that. And every time I'm surprised by
| how bad mistakes I made.
| niccl wrote:
| :-) clever
| felixhummel wrote:
| Source URL:
| https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/216#issuecom...
| matwood wrote:
| The Painted Man is a novel that was mostly written on the
| author's Blackberry while riding the train to work.
|
| https://www.geeknative.com/6955/the-painted-man-written-on-a...
| nathell wrote:
| A good read, too!
| bpye wrote:
| I understand why we ended up with touch screens but I do miss
| physical keyboards. Swipe typing is fast-ish - but only for
| dictionary words, not punctuation, etc.
| burgerrito wrote:
| I had a Nokia qwerty phone, and, man, it was such a superior
| way to type portably. I wish they still sell those kinds of
| phone...
|
| Like computer keyboards, it also had a ctrl key. That means
| that I can ctrl+c and ctrl+v to copy paste.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| I loved my blackberry but typing on it was way slower than on
| a touchscreen with predictive text. Especially when you need
| non-alphabetical characters.
| guappa wrote:
| I can't say I can relate.
|
| Even with regular nokia phones people were disabling the t9
| because it was faster to just type without predictive text.
|
| For me predictive text is mostly useless because I write in
| 4 languages and it can't even guess which language I'm
| using, let alone guess the word I want after.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| For me t9 was king - I still remember to type blindly and
| know exactly how many times to hit the asterisk to get
| the word I want.
|
| With touch screens I just turn off auto-correct.
| Sometimes I hit the words above the keyboard to
| complete/repair a word, sometimes I hit the word that's
| underlined red or blue to fix it. But never
| automatically.
| amaurose wrote:
| I also had several Nokia Communicators. They were great
| unique pieces of hardware.
| guappa wrote:
| Eh I wrote a short story on my qwerty nokia!
|
| Also, python programs :D
| latexr wrote:
| > I wish they still sell those kinds of phone
|
| You might be interested in https://www.clicks.tech/
|
| I have no idea if it's good or not, just remembered it
| exists.
| rozab wrote:
| This is irrelevant to coding, but boy I miss what it felt
| like (as a child) to type on a T9 predictive keypad. Once you
| get used to it it's easy to 'know' by muscle memory when the
| desired word is the second or third choice, so you end up
| typing with basically the same number of keystrokes as qwerty
| but with only 10 keys.
|
| Then again maybe this is only possible with the superpower of
| childhood cognition. I recently witnessed a friends 9yo
| playing with a 1940s typewriter I'd restored. Having
| basically never used a full sized keyboard before, within
| about 2 minutes she'd familiarized herself with the qwerty
| layout, figured out how to turn the shift lock on and off,
| deduced the correct key action to bounce the hammers off the
| platten without them clashing, and figured out how to change
| colours. All this took me at least 20 minutes.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| God knows how fast I could type on a BB. It was my first
| phone which was my dad's old phone and it got me into
| WhatsApp and browsing on the phone. Jeez, I remember my dad
| might have been one of the 10 people who ended up paying for
| WhatsApp. In my first year of having it, I think it was
| extended for free and I think it was acquired later by FB.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| As always, the Japanese has us beaten.
|
| Cell phone novels has been a thing for over 20 years and they
| were originally written using numpad cellphones.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_phone_novel
| 0xEF wrote:
| Physical discomforts of writing a novel on a smartphone
| aside, I am trying to wrap my head around trying to do the
| same with a device that needs T9 as input. I type slow on a
| touchscreen as it is, frequently losing my train of thought
| before I can get my whole comment out, the comments
| themselves often turning into meandering adventures in Fuzzy
| Logic Land as a result. I cannot imagine banging one out on a
| number pad, and I lived through that era, even working a job
| where cell phones were a no-no so we got pretty good at
| firing off quick texts without having to look at the keys.
| Short messages? Can do. Lengthy HN replies? Count me out.
| socksy wrote:
| I dunno until I learned to swipe on a touchscreen keyboard
| I was (and still would be) much slower there then with T9.
| I miss being able to text in my pocket without looking at
| my phone too...
| stavros wrote:
| T9 was pretty good, I remember being fairly fast on it. It
| wouldn't have been such a slog to type on, I don't think.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Back in the T9 days, it was not uncommon for Japanese to be
| faster on a cellphone than on a keyboard.
|
| The input algorithm used in Japan wasn't T9, but very
| similar to the kana-keyboard available on iPhones today,
| and the prediction (both kana-to-kanji and next word) was
| quite good as far as I remember.
| zwnow wrote:
| I use Neovim on Termux as well occasionally. With the right
| macros it's not too bad to write on phone. Fun for little stuff
| and languages that do not require tons of brackets.
| sensanaty wrote:
| This sounds like actual torture, and the madman inflicted it on
| himself. Kudos, I guess?
| nstart wrote:
| He's a kid from Bangladesh who is studying and isn't even in
| uni yet. He's mentioned on reddit that his parents are doing
| the classical asian parent thing of pushing him to become a
| doctor or engineer and right now he's busy studying for the
| medical entry exam. If he doesn't get through that he might
| consider a computer science thing. So basically the whole
| neovim plugin is a side quest at the moment.
|
| Always boggles my mind how raw talent, dedication, and
| integrity can all come together and just by pure chance of
| life, you can just miss out on a world of opportunity where
| people with far less dedication end up with so much more. Hope
| that this little moment on the internet actually results in a
| bigger opportunity for him eventually.
| rochak wrote:
| Oh man, if this is true, I truly salute his dedication for
| pushing through and contributing to open source. Not many,
| despite having all the means available to them, have the
| drive to "just do it". markview.nvim is a great plugin that
| does one thing and does it well.
|
| Edit: Seems like there is an open issue [1] to get him a PC
| to code on. Just one more reason why I love the community.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/218
| ruthmarx wrote:
| If he doesn't have a PC how/why was he motivated to write a
| neovim plugin in the first place?
| ddalex wrote:
| he's using neovim on his phone....
| ruthmarx wrote:
| Huh. thanks.
| awongh wrote:
| It's always a refreshing reminder of my privilege seeing
| how many barriers certain people have to just
| buying/receiving a computer- shipping into a country,
| dealing with getting money into a country, using a credit
| card, etc.
|
| Also, a lot of people say the world is getting worse, but
| computers and the internet are slowly but surely spreading
| to many people who wouldn't have had access even 5 years
| ago.
| iammrpayments wrote:
| That also happen to be my currently favorite neovim plugin before
| I knew this about the developer, which makes this even more
| impressive to me.
| jopicornell wrote:
| I love to have the portability of my phone, so I have my neovim
| as IDE on Termux, and I've to say that to do some fixes or review
| something puntual, it's not that bad. Writing a whole plugin is
| another level!
| ivjw wrote:
| Whenever I want to put something down, I open the browser on my
| phone, type in the address bar, then hit <CR>. Later I synch them
| along with the other tabs when I have access to the desktop. This
| routine developed totally unintentionally and has been somehow
| more productive than all the fancy notetaking apps I'd used.
| Maybe it's something about the claustrophobically tiny input slot
| that makes me want to widen it as much as possible. Another bonus
| is that when I later get to format the long string of text that
| is synched (as you can see I don't believe in the paragraph when
| writing on my phone), I get loads of additional ideas.
| pavlov wrote:
| That's even crazier than my habit of writing notes in macOS
| TextEdit and never saving them. (Currently at "Untitled 235")
| thih9 wrote:
| I'm at 380; I discovered that if you open mission control[1],
| preferably via the four-fingers-swipe-up touchpad gesture,
| you get some pretty visuals.
|
| Also, I have access to all of them on my phone via Files app
| and the iCloud sync, this is surprisingly practical.
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Control_(macOS)
| isametry wrote:
| > I have access to all of them on my phone via Files app
| and the iCloud sync
|
| TIL that "unsaved" TextEdit files automatically go to the
| iCloud/TextEdit folder! That changes things for sure. (It
| also means that there is no such thing as an _unsaved_
| TextEdit file.)
| isametry wrote:
| Have you given Stickies.app a try? It is designed exactly
| around this model (notes are never "saved" in a true sense,
| they just live all over your desktop, what you can do is
| export / import text however).
|
| Although I'd be surprised if you haven't.
| dewey wrote:
| I've started using https://tot.rocks many months ago, which is
| basically a dot in my menu bar, and if you click on it you have
| 7, non resizable text views you can cycle through for small
| drafting. It's way more useful than I thought it would be and I
| use it all the time to quickly write down things during a
| meeting, my list of things for the day and other stuff that I
| can wipe at any time.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Wait... so you send _everything_ you want to put down to
| Google, or does your browser 's address bar work differently
| from mine?
| ivjw wrote:
| They're mostly intended for online publication, so Google
| will have them sooner or later. Yet with personal stuff I'm
| more discreet, of course.
| almostnormal wrote:
| > Whenever I want to put something down, I open the browser on
| my phone [...]
|
| I write a mail (usually subject only) to myself. Actually, to
| noone, because my mobile devices Bcc myself. The notes are
| accessible from any device I can access my mailbox with, with
| no additional tools or servers for note keeping needed.
| dailykoder wrote:
| Looks like a nice plugin. Kudos to the madman, I will def check
| that one out. Thanks!
|
| Always have written markdown without preview and hoped that it
| looked right when I commited it.
|
| Edit: Or on edge cases I have used remarkable[1], which I have
| found ages ago. I don't even know how """good""" it is, but I
| like its simplicity.
|
| - [1] https://remarkableapp.github.io/
| pandemic_region wrote:
| Back in the 90's, I created something like a mortgage calculator
| on my HP48gx. It was about 1500 "lines" (a line being maybe at
| most 30 chars) , all keyed in using only the calculator. The mind
| is capable of many things.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The HP48 has a pretty good keyboard. I remember someone who
| typed as fast as most people would do on a full keyboard, using
| some weird kind of touch typing with the hands vertically
| positioned on both sides of the calculator.
|
| The problem is more about the software. The HP48 is pretty
| slow, and has a tendency to lose your data a bit too easily.
| There are some editors written in assembly that are good enough
| though, and since you had a GX, you could use memory card
| backups.
| pandemic_region wrote:
| Yes, the keyboard space was large enough that you could get
| into a routine of using both hands. Scrolling through the
| code was a nightmare though, it was not the fastest IDE at
| the time.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| My HP48 from high school (90's) is one of my prized
| possessions. It still works. And I still can't use a calculator
| that does not use Reverse Polish Notation...
| Ringz wrote:
| I wrote a few programs on my HP48GX (which still works
| perfectly). Programs about Maxwell formulas and Einstein's
| effects where a little bit more complicated. Not once did I
| think, "But this is exhausting!". However, I stayed under 1000
| lines.
|
| But now, if something gets a little bit more complicated or
| repetitive in my cozy Neovim environment I think more about how
| to avoid this with ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf... maybe a
| restrictive environment is sometimes better to actually build
| something?
| pandemic_region wrote:
| It's development stripped down to the bare essentials.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Nice, I too wrote my first real game in RPL.
|
| The HP48 series lives on as a free android app, for all the RPN
| fans. =3
| mmcgaha wrote:
| I was looking for a reference but I am afraid it is lost in
| some news group in the distant past but my understanding is
| that all of Meta Kernel was written directly on an HP
| calculator.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Am I the only one who clicked through just to find out how to get
| neovim working on my iPhone? My iPhone doesn't do that :(
| tomislavpet wrote:
| Try this: https://ish.app/
| daft_pink wrote:
| Thanks!
| karel-3d wrote:
| His parents still want to send him to medical school, because
| he's Asian, so he needs to be a doctor. (I'm directly quoting
| him!)
|
| That's ... something.
| dilawar wrote:
| I am an Indian and somehow I find it a little bit extreme!!
| larodi wrote:
| he/she is expected to go for (should be in society) the role
| which pays best, that's how things work in many parts of the
| world. add family to that and you'll understand why.
|
| Apparently what he/she shows him/herself to be is something
| akin to avatar level concentration and intelligence level
| similar to that of Audrey Tang perhaps...
| __rito__ wrote:
| I have pondered much on such things.
|
| Not every developer gets to work on Sora, Quantum AI chip, or
| CUDA source code.
|
| For the very vast majority, it is facing stupid PMs, MBA
| bosses, daily standups, and getting fired with no fault of your
| own. There are good sides, too, of course. But you have to live
| through these.
|
| Do you choose these or getting VIP treatment in society with
| tenured jobs and after MD + 10 YoE, you can say fu to any boss
| and open your own clinic, and economically be forever in the
| 0.1%?
|
| And honestly, outside the US, many of the positive sides of
| being an SWE disappear completely (like crazy compensations,
| having too many options, etc.).
|
| Programming is crazy cool, but the profession of Software
| Engineering is not always that cool.
| globalnode wrote:
| my experience in australia was that it was like being a fancy
| receptionist. stupid overtime and low compensation. im not
| great at selling myself but it id rather be a tradie in this
| country than in s/w.
| david-gpu wrote:
| You raise good points. Looking at the statistics, the average
| doctor has significantly better compensation than the average
| code jockey. Most programmers won't ever get a job at
| $TrendyCorp, as you point out.
|
| _> Not every developer gets to work on Sora, Quantum AI
| chip, or CUDA source code._
|
| _> For the very vast majority, it is facing stupid PMs, MBA
| bosses, daily standups, and getting fired with no fault of
| your own._
|
| Those two are not mutually incompatible. I saw examples of
| all of that while working at outwardly glamorous companies.
| Thankfully I didn't experience any of that personally.
|
| _> Programming is crazy cool, but the profession of Software
| Engineering is not always that cool._
|
| You could say the same about medicine. It is a tough
| stressful job for most.
| smatija wrote:
| I think this experience is true if you work in software
| companies.
|
| I work for a factory maintaining it's existing custom ERP and
| building new software for it (basically imagine a programmer
| consultant for 1 costumer just with regular contract). Mix of
| maintaining legacy code, writing new one and servicing
| hardware is dynamic enough not to be bored and I have a lot
| of independence in the job. It's comfy af.
| masijo wrote:
| How did you get a job like that? Sounds pretty good
| smatija wrote:
| Word of mouth.
|
| The point is to realize that almost every non-IT company
| of certain size (lets say 50-100 employees+) that started
| before SAP&similiar became popular in your country has
| large body of custom software and that the guy who built
| it is probably thinking about retiring.
|
| Minus is of course that most custom software is pretty
| horrible from code quality standpoint, so you need to
| have a high tolerance for debuging and that you need to
| have a little knowledge of everything (specialisation is
| not possible).
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Even if the company has been sold on some SAP or Oracle
| solution, they always need someone how can customize and
| take ownership of that stuff.
| MezzoDelCammin wrote:
| You'd be surprised how many such jobs are there. Mostly
| not listed though. If my experience is any guide, one
| generally starts as a temp / consultant and you slowly
| expand the role from there. There's generally a point
| some years later where you're almost "too big to fail".
| Too many small odd jobs that are needed maybe once a
| year, but when they happen, they are pretty important.
| smatija wrote:
| Important to note that this too big to fail point occurs
| very quickly in some cases. Non-IT companies are
| generally very risk/change averse in regards to their IT
| infrastucture (and for very good reason, see e.g. [1] and
| [2]). So if you are capable enough to learn their legacy
| codebase you will be very quickly the only person
| worldwide capable of maintaining it.
|
| [1] - https://www.cio.com/article/274138/enterprise-
| resource-plann...
|
| [2] - https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/06/birmingham_e
| rp_budget...
| 3form wrote:
| Not every MD gets to work on interesting cases, furthering
| the field, and all while it being low stakes and purely
| theoretical.
|
| For the vast majority, it is facing the medical colleagues
| who don't care, and will bury you from envy if you do, and
| get any better than them for it. It's facing patients who
| don't take care of themselves, or who just take your time,
| want favors from you outside of your working hours, but most
| importantly, the burden of having many people die despite you
| trying your very best.
|
| Do you choose these, or getting chill treatment in society
| with freedom, where after 10 YoE you can say fu to any boss
| and open your own consultancy, and economically be forever in
| the 0.1%?
|
| And honestly, outside the US, many of the positive sides of
| being an MD disappear completely (like crazy compensations,
| having too many options, ease of opening your own business)
|
| I understand the point that you're trying to make, but being
| an MD is hell of a job, and honestly, as a unit, I don't wish
| it on anyone who does not specifically want to be there. And
| even then, your good motivation to do it might be your
| undoing.
|
| It's really not all that it's cracked up to be, and the only
| reason I wouldn't recommend to be a software engineer is that
| the future of it is fairly uncertain.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Programming is crazy cool, but the profession of Software
| Engineering is not always that cool.
|
| The hours, work expectations and imposition on daily life can
| be pretty grim for a medical doctor, presumably with a strong
| correlation on speciality and role. I'm very much not-a-
| doctor.
| latexr wrote:
| > Not every developer gets to work on Sora, Quantum AI chip,
| or CUDA source code.
|
| Not every developer _wants_ to work on those. Many developers
| even find at least one of those to be unethical. It is
| possible to find rewarding challenging jobs as a developer
| without having to go work for the big names.
| jazz9k wrote:
| Many doctors I know don't have their own clinic (it's too
| expensive) and still contend with terrible management
| decisions, and have no work/life balance.
|
| On top of this, school is long and expensive.
|
| Getting a good dev job is better in comparison.
| gessha wrote:
| Not sure if it's the people who survive med school or just
| who's interested in being a doctor but every medical doctor I
| know has serious personality flaws that makes them hard to
| be/live with.
| elp wrote:
| As opposed to us totally balanced and not unhinged in the
| slightest devs?
|
| I suspect that any heavily technical field has a risk of
| causing flaws personality flaws, but maybe I'm projecting.
|
| FWIW all the doctors I know socially seem pretty well
| balanced other than maybe a tendency to crowbar the word
| Doctor into the conversation. MBAs are still worse though.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I see several big issues with SWE roles
|
| - it's hard to have a complete career only coding (assuming
| that you'll still enjoy it at 40-50-60). Ageism is a thing.
|
| - you're extremely dependent on economy. Sure, you can earn
| $500K+ at FAANG, but you can also get laid off and earn much
| less. You probably won't earn such high salary for your whole
| life (see above point)
|
| - SWE not a respected profession. What do you do for a living?
| I'm a coder VS I'm a doctor.
|
| I'm not saying being a doctor is perfect, it certainly varies.
| But I feel it's more future proof than SWE. Also it's easy to
| code as a hobby. Perhaps even more fun than doing it
| professionally. Another point, in some developed countries,
| having access to healthcare can be increasingly difficult. If
| you're in the system, you make it easier for you and your
| family to get care when you need it.
|
| I hope this guy can do whatever he wants, but I can understand
| his parents.
| raincole wrote:
| > But I feel it's more future proof than SWE
|
| In turns of future proofing it's not even comparable. SWEs
| have negative protection. Mostly not unionized. You don't
| even need a license to write code.
|
| If the government says we're going to launch 100 programming
| schools and flood the market with 100,000 coders in next 4
| years, no one bats an eye. If it's for doctors you can see
| what happened in Korea[1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_medical_
| cris...
| arp242 wrote:
| One of the people on vi Stackexchange site mostly answers
| questions from his phone. Glad it works for him, but just seems
| absolutely mental to me, especially when you have access to a
| decent machine.
| krick wrote:
| I mean, it sounds weird, but it really isn't _that_ crazy. I
| cannot claim I 'm more or even equally productive on my phone
| compared to a proper desktop setup, but the thing is I'm
| basically glued to my phone, and sometimes I catch myself
| typing fucking essays on my phone being literally 1.5 m from my
| laptop for no reason, just because, I was scrolling stuff on my
| phone in the first place.
| ghjfrdghibt wrote:
| My initial reaction was: Why?!
|
| But fair play, I find it hard enough to program on a keyboard.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Maybe it was a form of self-enforced focus, a bit like those
| "distraction-free" writing apps.
| ICameToComment wrote:
| No. They don't have any other hardware to work on. It's out
| of necessity, not choice. That reddit thread is in fact
| talking about a Gofundme and sending them an used laptop but
| they refused because they expect a lot of trouble actually
| getting it.
| cess11 wrote:
| I think there's a lot of us that do more or less serious
| programming on our handhelds. The author of Picolisp does a lot
| of development on a tablet, and has created his own software
| keyboard: https://software-lab.de/penti.html
|
| I've been using it for years, and have solved crises at work with
| it and Termux by SSH:ing from my phone into a box attached to the
| right VPN and jumped from there to control over production.
| Tablets are really nice in this area, they have a lot of battery
| time and one can lay in bed and do the stuff in vim, tmux, &c. as
| one usually does, just a little bit slower due to software
| keyboards being a bit less efficient.
| theden wrote:
| I've done development on a Nokia n900, but with an external
| keyboard -- can't imagine using an on-screen keyboard, or even a
| tiny physical one!
|
| Funny thing is, I don't know if some high sec work envs are much
| better, where developers have to nest remote through machines (of
| different OSes) just to get a terminal...
| bionsystem wrote:
| We work exclusively on remote VMs that have no internet access.
| Well writing the stuff is fine through PuTTY (with tmux+vim),
| some other guys use RDP with VSCode but it is extremely laggy
| and I hate it. Some tasks can be annoying.
|
| $job before that I would remotely connect to clients machines
| through various ways. Most would be a webpage with some
| terminal emulation in JS, or some web-based RDP (to a Linux or
| a Windows machines), and sometimes bouncing again to our last
| machines. And sometimes you get the actual VPN where all you
| have to do is to run the client (typically IPDiva, sometimes
| they use OpenVPN) and just run putty to connect to your
| machine.
|
| That last experience was often painful especially when certain
| softwares in between you and your work start to fail. Also a
| lot of those clients had none or very restricted internet
| access, so it is really hard to get debugging tools. Sometimes
| your work would just be a loop of "connect, type a few
| commands, get the web-based terminal messed up, disconnect,
| repeat" until your problem is solved. Especially, for our needs
| we set up our own windows VMs with all software needed to
| connect to all the clients, hosted in our office and accessible
| via our own VPN. This way our clients would only see our office
| IP. But that meant one more VPN for everybody and one more
| "bounce" to do before any work...
| wordofx wrote:
| > We work exclusively on remote VMs that have no internet
| access.
|
| Is this some kind of developer dominatrix fetish or something
| where people get off punishing themselves.
|
| "You've been a bad boy! You used AI! No Internet for you"
| ch33zer wrote:
| Nowhere near as sophisticated but I wrote my entire blog on my
| phone without a keyboard. It was somewhat annoying but you get
| used to it: http://Blaise.bike
| barosl wrote:
| I also write code using my phone when I'm on a bus or the subway.
| It requires some patience but after getting used to it, the
| experience is surprisingly pleasant especially if you're familiar
| with terminal-based tools. My environment consists of:
| - Galaxy S24 Ultra - Termius: I think it is the best
| terminal emulator and SSH client on Android. The sad thing is
| that the paid version is a bit too expensive. ($10 per month, no
| permanent option) - tmux: Mobile connections are brittle so
| it is a must. - Vim: Allows me to navigate the code freely
| without using arrow keys, which is really useful on the touch
| keyboard.
|
| Not that of a big deal, but the thing that I think is more
| pleasant on the phone than on the PC is that I can use my
| fingerprint to log in to the remote server. The fingerprint is
| stored in the TPM so it is safe. It feels magical!
|
| Edit: The biggest pain point for me was the limited width of the
| smartphone screen. It is a bit hard to skim over the code quickly
| because most lines are severely cut. Text wrapping helps this but
| personally I hate text wrapping. Keeping landscape mode is not an
| option because the code area is completely hidden when the touch
| keyboard is displayed. That's why foldable phones are great for
| coding, as they have a wider screen. My previous phone was Galaxy
| Fold and it was a wonderful coding machine.
| glidergun wrote:
| Try pairing tmux with mosh, it's how I've been working for
| years whenever I'm forced to admin through a brittle straw.
| Mosh combats lag pretty well and doesn't care if your
| connection drops intermittently. https://mosh.org/
| nissarup wrote:
| "...admin through a brittle straw." :D That's exactly what it
| feels like.
| barosl wrote:
| I tried Mosh but it didn't fit my taste. It tries to
| "predict" the state of the screen before being acknowledged
| by the server, but sometimes the prediction is wrong and Mosh
| reverts the cursor movement and redraws the affected area of
| the terminal. For example, when I'm using split windows in
| Vim or tmux, Mosh allows typed characters to overflow beyond
| the separator, briefly, until being told "no" by the server.
| Personally I find this behavior very disturbing. Enduring
| higher lags was more bearable to me.
| glidergun wrote:
| I can see how that's off-putting, but I've learned to
| ignore the occasional cosmetic hiccup and just trust that
| it will sync up correctly. I use it with
| --predict=experimental (largely undocumented), which seems
| to be even more aggressive, but it works great for me.
| _joel wrote:
| mosh has saved some hair pulling, especially when on a train
| journey with at best spotty 3G and you get pinged about an
| outage.
| sharperguy wrote:
| Do you use a special keyboard app too, or just the default one?
| barosl wrote:
| Just the default one. I tried some alternative keyboards and
| they are better in some ways but in the end the default
| keyboard was enough. Termius provides input of some special
| keys (e.g. Ctrl, Alt, Esc, Tab, Home, End) so that's another
| reason why the default keyboard is enough.
| autoexec wrote:
| Be sure to check the privacy policy on your default
| keyboard. I've been burned by that before. The default
| keyboard on my last galaxy phone was sending every single
| keystroke to a third party and checking their privacy
| policy showed they used that data for things like market
| research, guessing at my level of education, building a
| psychological profile, detecting my interests, etc. and
| that they in turn shared that data with others.
|
| I switched to AnySoftKeyboard and although the auto-
| correct/spellcheck is way worse (understandable since
| they're not collecting every word everyone's typing) the
| customization and terminal mode are great. I'd occasionally
| code on my phone in termux (the largest program written on
| that device was only around 2000 lines) and it did the job.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| Phone keyboards are a big security risk.
|
| Is there a way to completely block them from accessing
| the network?
| nanna wrote:
| But how you type?
| gorlilla wrote:
| T9 on a Nokia 3310.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I wish I could do it. I find even just texting annoying. Also
| Galaxy phone. I wonder if my fingers may just be too fat.
| Although I don't think they are. Actually I hate doing most
| things through a phone, and e.g. if a food delivery app has a
| desktop version I will always use that given the chance.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Laptop is superior.. sorry
| rlupi wrote:
| I have been really impressed lately using Samsung Dex on a
| XReal Air 2. AR glasses have really improved in the recent
| years. It gives you a better screen than many small laptops.
|
| For longer trips (train, airplane), add a mechanical wireless
| bluetooth keyboard (my choice would be a NuPhy Air 75) to feel
| like a king. For the occasional browser + SSH on the go, it's
| better (less space + better keyboard + larger screen
| experience) than bringing my 13" laptop (+ phone).
| shoooooooooota wrote:
| Inverting this:
|
| If you were to develop a programming language, IDE and DX
| optimized for coding on a phone, what would that look like?
| morningsam wrote:
| I think this will become more common, not just in developing
| countries but also in the West, where phones are practically
| mandatory to have and laptops aren't, so lots of kids will get
| their first programming experience on phones.
| bilekas wrote:
| I've fixed one or two things on my phone in a pinch, or restarted
| some services but having the patience to code fully on a
| phone/tablet is a whole different level of dedication. I feel
| naked without an LsP.
| whazor wrote:
| But Neovim does allow for both LSP and even LLM integrations.
| So auto-completion could make typing on a phone much less
| tedious.
| walthamstow wrote:
| This is what they make you do in Guantanamo
| wslh wrote:
| Genuinely speaking, are there UX/UI/CHI innovations about
| developing software on small screens? I think it go both ways: it
| is not only about the form-factor but rather programming
| languages and UIs specifically adapted. For example, it is not
| the same to develop in C++ that using Python or LISP.
| skydhash wrote:
| Something like uiua [0] could be workable, especially with the
| virtual keyboard. I can probably see images based environments
| (common lisp, smalltalk) wokring too due to the interactive
| nature of live programming.
|
| [0]: https://www.uiua.org/
| coolcoder613 wrote:
| I have a lilygo T-Deck, I use it for writing in bed with a custom
| text editor [0]. It has a surprisingly great typing experience,
| and I can get up to a decent speed. Typing _can_ be good on
| handheld devices.
|
| [0] https://github.com/coolcoder613eb/notepad
| mid-kid wrote:
| I know it sounds silly but vim controls surprisingly well on a
| touch keyboard. Not needing modifier keys nearly as often as
| other editors is a major blessing here.
| enotmcsquare wrote:
| People say always use the tool that's best suited for the job.
| This is very good example of why that advice shouldn't be
| followed.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| That's one way of making sure your wrists are completely useless
| for any kind of work at age 30...
| sharperguy wrote:
| I wonder what keyboard he is using? I use Thumb-Key which is a
| very unorthodox keyboard layout which I find speeds up things
| like typing special characters needed for coding. I can use vim
| decently well but I wouldn't develop anything that large with it.
| aembleton wrote:
| Looks like a standard keyboard. He might use a different one
| when coding though:
| https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/216#issuecom...
| erbdex wrote:
| In developing countries like India - a surprisingly high number
| of students do not have access to a computer. I have a lot of
| friends who had to learn enough on phone to bootstrap into buying
| their first laptop.
|
| One of my best friend - in his village in the hills they did not
| have electricity but the government had sent a PC. No one was
| allowed to go close to it but that was the very thing that
| inspired him to learn computers. Today he's one of the sharpest
| linux/infosec folks in my small circle.
| icemelt8 wrote:
| Thats true most people in Pakistan don't own a laptop and don't
| ever intend to buy one. It makes me irrationally angry when
| people are buying flight tickets on the phone even though
| having access to a laptop.
| Havoc wrote:
| So we fedex him a laptop and then agi by end of week
| gield wrote:
| It's not that easy to just send him a laptop [1]:
|
| >>I'd caution against posting a laptop to Bangladesh as there
| is a very real chance it'd spend the next six months sat in
| customs while an official looks for a pay off.
|
| >Yeah, this is the reason I wasn't too keen on having stuff
| shipped from outside.
|
| [1]
| https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/218#issuecom...
| ongytenes wrote:
| I been writing programs for over 50 years and I shuddered at the
| thought of doing it on a phone. My first thought, he must be a
| masochist. Then I thought he might not had anything better to
| work on. I'm a touch typist who doesn't need to look at the
| keyboard why typing. Given my cataracts and tiny screen and tiny
| keyboard, it is torture to type on my phone.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| People are already organizing a gofundme page for the author.
|
| Most computer hobbyists hate seeing talent hobbled by
| circumstance. Our local telecom has a nonprofit up-cycling
| program for these kids. =3
| personalityson wrote:
| Someone made a comment that millennials are the first and last
| generation who grew up with desktop PCs, discussion forums on
| the raw internet. Kids these days are mostly using smartphones,
| tablets and apps.
|
| We are used to think that younger people know more about
| computers, but in the case of desktop computers this might not
| be the case.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > I'm a touch typist who doesn't need to look at the keyboard
| _why_ typing.
|
| :)
| mckn1ght wrote:
| I'm a touch typist as well but use a combination of
| swype/dictation on mobile and pretty much all my writing
| there looks like this. I will bang out a message, then have
| to painstakingly edit all the mistakes. It's an annoying
| downgrade in communication experience.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| My rule is to only correct things if I am sure it will
| impact the audience's ability to deduce my intended
| meaning.
| bmicraft wrote:
| I can literally type on my phone without looking at the keys
| with an acceptable amount of erros. Might be a skill issue?
| temporarara wrote:
| If you've got big fingers you need quite a lot of skills to
| type on your phone even when you are looking.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| the bar for "acceptable errors" is different if you're
| writing code vs texting bro
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I agree, but also: if younger me only had access to coding
| through a phone, younger me would be coding on a phone.
| segmondy wrote:
| Strange, any phone today would be better than most hardware we
| had 30 yrs ago. In the 90's I had monitors with resolutions of
| 320x240, limited info on the screen. Things were slow. If you
| gave me the option of using a phone from today or a computer
| from then, back then and today, I'll definitely pick the phone.
| We don't code at the speed of thought, we poke at the computer
| one key at a time, one register at a time.
| uludag wrote:
| This is actually a surprisingly depressing post.
|
| It makes me question all the assumptions I have about dev UX. If
| my dev tooling was taken away, the saas products I depend on shut
| down, slack replaced by email, keyboard with phone, etc. would I
| eventually adapt to such a situation? Would my productivity cut
| be only marginal?
|
| I sure hope the case is that this developer is just a genius, as
| I'd like to think we as devs (and maybe as a society at large)
| are not just deluding ourselves thinking that software is
| innovating.
| cesarb wrote:
| > If my dev tooling was taken away, the saas products I depend
| on shut down, slack replaced by email, keyboard with phone,
| etc. would I eventually adapt to such a situation?
|
| As others have noted, plenty of us have developed on computers
| where the display had merely 25 lines and 80 columns of
| characters, or less, and no Internet connection _at all_. Not
| intermittent connection, complete absence of connection.
| Exchanging data meant physically carrying disks, which
| contained as little as 360 _kilobytes_ (or less).
|
| That developer's phone is probably thousands of times more
| powerful than what we had back then, _and_ has the luxury of a
| nearly permanent network connection to a huge amount of even
| more powerful computers. The only real limitation, other than
| arbitrary operating system restrictions, is the very small
| screen size and tiny keyboard size. Give that phone an external
| USB or Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a way to connect to a
| television as an external monitor, and it becomes close enough
| to a desktop PC.
| andix wrote:
| 30 years ago a lot of software was developed on 25 by 80
| character displays and without multitasking. It also worked.
| mendelmaleh wrote:
| 25x80 is ok. i'm getting 37x62 in portrait, 6x128 in landscape,
| both with the keyboard open. typing symbols is the main
| handicap imo, overall unusable.
| severino wrote:
| I once read an article about how some Nintendo Famicom developers
| in the 80s used to program their games without a keyboard, just
| using some kind of joystick or trackball to select the characters
| on the screen. Knowing that, this doesn't look that bad.
| imposterr wrote:
| There's now money being raised if anyone is interested in
| donating:
| https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/218#issuecom...
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I used to write plenty code on a tiny resistive touchscreen of
| the Openmoko Neo Freerunner 16 years ago. I was often hacking on
| its OS itself since big chunks of FSO middleware were written in
| Python. 25k lines doesn't seem that much.
|
| In fact, I found it less annoying for typing code than current
| big capacitive screens or even N900's keyboard (which was great
| for texting, but could really use an additional row of keys for
| symbols).
| zachlatta wrote:
| We are doing a fundraiser for him to get a laptop here:
| https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/oxy2dev-laptop
|
| Transparent ledger of donations:
| https://hcb.hackclub.com/oxy2dev-laptop/transactions
|
| We need about $500 more USD to get him an M1 MacBook Air (they
| are more expensive in Bangladesh, where he is based).
|
| GitHub thread with details:
| https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/218. Here is a
| Reddit comment from the author showing this is the official
| fundraiser:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/1h7vhmg/bro_been_de...
| isoprophlex wrote:
| From my spoiled western perspective it seems surprisingly
| difficult to either just send him the money or have a laptop
| delivered to him. I wouldnt have guessed that upfront...
| wordofx wrote:
| He doesn't want one sent to him because he believes customs
| will hold it until bribed.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| Which isn't uncommon in places with high corruption, I
| remember the horror stories trying to order a high value
| item accross the border (Different country similar
| situation)
| zachlatta wrote:
| We shipped 10,000 packages of free hardware and other
| prizes to teenagers this summer as part of
| https://hackclub.com/arcade/. In total we shipped to 119
| countries.
|
| India and Bangladesh caused by far the most issues with
| customs. Packages got held up, and they often tried to
| charge duties of up to 70%. His concern is definitely real.
|
| The best option is to buy an item within the country using
| a US card, or to buy an item using a local card and get
| reimbursed via PayPal from a US bank account.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Welcome to dealing with a 3rd world country, this is
| expected.
|
| Source: Am from 3rd world country.
| shanselman wrote:
| you're the best Zach
| hinkley wrote:
| I remoted into work from home one day using my tablet to connect
| to my work machine. It kinda worked. But I wouldn't want to do it
| daily.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| Why not just plug a USB or bluetooth keyboard into the phone?
|
| That would be 90% of a laptop IMO. Although I haven't tested it
| much, Samsung Dex makes my phone appear very much like a laptop
| when using an external keyboard and monitor.
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