Code, code on the range

I have achieved a major workflow milestone.

All of my web development can now be accomplished on the iPad, meaning that I may venture forth light of heart and burden, yet still program (in addition to writing, drawing, and hatching nefarious plots).

How? you cry plaintively. I too wish to walk the earth, free like the majestic Buffalo buffalo.

Not an actual Buffalo buffalo.

For me, the answer has been a triforce of apps, webhost, and extra hardware.

All of these puzzle pieces are replaceable. It’s just a matter of finding something that works for you.

But first, the webhosts.

It didn’t have to be Linode. Any server where I had actual control would do.

I was able to persuade my previous provider to give me remote access to my account so that I could install things. However, the operating system they used did not have a package manager.

For those unfamiliar with package managers, not having one meant that I had to install every single miserable dependency manually. To rephrase, programs need to run other programs, which need to run other programs. If you have to hunt down, build, and install every single one of these obscure bastards, that’s a lot of programs.

Energetic facial hair in the
background, masochism
in the foreground.

Though the general public may have the impression that anyone mad enough to stare down the barrel of a command line will have energetic facial hair and more than a tinge of masochism, the latter is patently untrue. That’s why there are package managers.

Package managers know program A needs program B needs program C. And they have a library of all of these programs. Handles it all for you.

Long story short: moving from little-known webhost to webhost used by people who know what they’re doing changed game from “cannot get shit done” to “can get shit done.”

Upon the necessity of keyboards

The software keyboard serves for train rides and fiddling around, or desperate times. If you propose to spend any time whatsoever at a table, a keyboard is necessary. That will be all.

New Cherry Diet Coda Zero: no calories, all flavor.

There’s two apps that I use for any programming work: Diet Coda and Textastic.

Diet Coda combines FTP access to the files on the webhost plus an editor for programming, with SSH access to the webhost itself for publishing and other server tasks.

Theoretically, it does everything.

Practically, it’s a new release and crashes quite a lot. Also, I’m not a huge fan of the software keyboard. We’ll see how it goes as I get more used to it. Since I have an external keyboard, it’s usually not a big concern.

Still, for emergency coding, or writing a draft on the train, Textastic works quite well. The software keyboard pretty much covers everything. It’s not ludicrous speed, but I can get things done without feeling an unquenchable desire to frisbee the iPad through a window every time I realize I must type an underscore.

Textastic is more general-purpose rather than specifically linked with my web server, so file sync is not quite as smooth. On the other hand, I can also use it to pull stuff from Dropbox and send it to my web server, which is useful.

But no workflow is so perfect it cannot be improved.

Photos and photo layout are not quite there yet. I think I vaguely promised a post on Photostream at some point. I’ve avoided it so far. I feel like I must have been doing something wrong, since it was so terrible, so I’ll have to try and bite the bullet again.

More experimentation

Last time I tried the iPad setup at a Ruby on Rails meetup, it failed due to lame webhost making it impossible to install anything. This time, I am reasonably confident that I can get it to work. And then it'll be just me and my two and a half pounds* against the world.

*iPad 2 + Smart cover + ZAGGKeys Flex + stylus