iPad and coding

[strangedave]

To add my own voice to a Daring Fireball piece
Cory Doctorow wrote

The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better.

Alex Payne wrote

if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today.

My first

Comments

[owlrigh]

This. People who really are into IT are going to have more than one platform to play with, anyway, and a child who likes computers is going to play with the ipad, read stuff about ipads online about hacking them, whatever, and then pester their parents for some other computer to do the things with they want. Hell, they can go down to the local puter shop and get a box for almost nothing if they want to stick to the second-hand stuff! Tinkering in the innards of a box is a good fun way of learning what's what

[alias_sqbr]

Wow. Yes. Because there's only one path to becoming a programmer.

Admittedly, I ended up not becoming one because I was better at other things, but I do have a CS major and program occasionally for fun, plus my Phd research and most recent job had programmer-ish aspects. And: I didn't own a computer for most of my childhood and adolescence, and learned/did most of my programing at school/uni in Official Computer Classes or in my free time in the school labs. Then again I'm probably not hardcore and manly enough to count to these guys (for a start, I hate electronics)

[loic]

I think Apple is engaged in two things:
* providing exciting products that people engage with emotionally
* using the dominant market position they have in the media player and media sales space to gain share in other markets using needlessly proprietary systems
The iPad's a great example of that.

But I don't think that's a problem for the future of programmers. I think the lack of keyboard is more of a problem than the proprietary platform. The web is the real platform now (as Steve Jobs realized when he decided that the only platform for the iPhone was originally going to be through the web) and you can develop from anywhere.

[strangedave]

Well, there are reasons to use native apps rather than web apps, but most of them are pretty incremental currently.

I do have a few native apps that aren't just web apis (ssh client, for instance) and of course I have a couple of games and a bunch of music apps. But apart from ssh, almost of all things that I find really useful rather than fun are web apps.

[loic]

With Web Sockets (which are supported in Chrome and I assume Safari) would let one write a decent ssh-ish thing.

[lordbug]

Had a flick through this site?
http://www.androidtablets.net/

[strangedave]

Had a little look. I don't trust Android rumours much these days, though. And I'm expecting an Android first gen tablet to be a bit flaky (like the first gen phones).

intellectual property advertisement

[decrypt_era]

Seems to me people're conflating issues,
then getting bogged down in details.

Issue 1: Well-designed human-oriented usable tech.
Issue 2: The control of propagation of information.

So Cory leaps about in religious fervour, what's new?
I'm glad he's out there doing it.
Just like I'm happy people like you build organisations like EFA.
But I'm even more excited by your work at the Artefactory,
because I agree with one of your fundamental points -
if we want something to be a a part of reality
we'd damn well better do something about making it happen.
And I don't mean lobby the nearest power structure,
corporations can easily outdo us in that
(increasingly, they are the power structure