
Show HN: Binary, a cloud development environment on the iPad - dshankar
http://www.thebinaryapp.com
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ebbv
Cool, looks well done but pick a more distinctive name. Using a general
computing word like "Binary" is just going to cause confusion. And in this
case it doesn't even really make a ton of sense.

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Tycho
Maybe name it after a cloud type, eg. Cumulus, Stratus, Cirrus

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dshankar
Good suggestions :) thank you!

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danbruc
Why would you want to write code on a tablet? What happened to »the right
tools for the job«?

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gjritter
He answers this in the section titled "Why I Created Binary" on the web page.

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danbruc
Yes, I read that. What I was up to is how painful this makes development. Even
developing on a laptop is utterly painful - single small screen, no mouse, no
real keyboard. It is probably nice to look at the sea while developing but it
is not productive.

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scott_karana
Why are you judging someone else's productivity methods?

Good developers write apps to scratch their own itches, and this seems to be a
laudable example, whether it scratches your itch or not.

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danbruc
If you see a craftsman trying to drive a screw into a board using a hammer
wouldn't you wonder why he doesn't just use screwdriver?

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julian_t
Sure... but a laptop is _exactly_ the right tool for the kind of stuff I work
on at present. Don't need multiple screens or fancy mice. Do need something I
can easily carry. As and when I need more, I'll get it.

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ezy
Tangential question, not intended to the poo-poo this, which I think is great,
but more of an information query: Do people actually find this better than
upgrading your phone to do tethering and using an ultra book?

I attempted to use my iPad in exactly the way he described, and it was largely
unsuccessful after about a week honeymoon period. I didn't even have that many
requirements. SSH plus a web browser was sufficient.

The main issues I had related to the glossy iPad display, the crappy keyboard
support (not all control keys supported), detached keyboard making lap use...
awkward, and pointing to things on the screen (for cut and paste or rdp use)
was tedious. Almost all of which were solvable in some indirect way, but kind
of made the exercise pointless if you have the money to spend on an ultrabook.

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hnriot
While this may be fun, all of the "why" points are better satisfied with a
macbook air. As good battery life, if not better with new machines.

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JofArnold
I'd have thought the same until I recently went on holiday. Bringing my high
spec MBA seemed like a really bad idea, so I bought a new bluetooth keyboard
and took the iPad instead. It took me a while to get Koder and Firebug working
properly, but in the end having a light device in my compact messenger bag was
so much better than I was expecting. Really enjoyed it.

Korder has a lot of issues though, and many of them seemed to be solved by
Binary.

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jowiar
I'm definitely curious about this. One project I've been looking at doing was
building an iPad-optimized version of an R IDE (RStudio or something like it)
backed by EC2.

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btbuildem
right.. good luck doing a search for that..

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rgbrgb
This looks great. I'm a bit skeptical but very excited to do iOS dev on my
iPad mini!

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dshankar
Hi! Creator of Binary here - I plan on adding support for the iPad mini and
(hopefully) Android tablets this fall.

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mikerg87
Clearly you will be compared to Diet Coda and others. Can you speak about your
differentiator. I'm always interested in carrying less hardware so what you
say is important to me.

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dshankar
Lots of (big) differences. For example, you can write Objective C code for iOS
apps in the Binary editor, the code compiles on the Binary platform, and the
compiled app is returned to your iPad home screen.

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pdenya
> and I wanted my iOS apps to be compiled, shipped over-the-air, and installed
> on my home screen for instant testing

How is the compiling online and installing on the home screen achieved?

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dshankar
Thanks for asking!

Binary compiles your iOS apps on our remote OS X machines, and the compiled
binaries are shipped over-the-air using Apple's Wireless Enterprise app
distribution. The distribution mechanism operates the same way as Testflight
(the iOS beta testing service).

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pdenya
Is there any pricing information available? I imagine there will be a
subscription service required for the cloud compiling.

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dshankar
I'm not sure yet, but I think the app will be free. Text editing is free, and
$10-20/month for remote compiling. What do you think?

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pdenya
It really depends on how well everything works but that seems reasonable even
for part time use. I like to compile a lot while i'm coding and I typically
make heavy use of the simulator so i'm still a bit skeptical. Looking forward
to trying it out though.

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Tycho
Makes me think: why don't they just start shipping macbook airs with 4G.

The app looks great though. Been wanting something like this for a long time.

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JofArnold
I believe it's due to the metal case and the antenna. Apparently Apple have
looked at it for a long time - there's even a MBP prototype with a stupid-
looking external antenna somewhere... I think I saw it on eBay

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geuis
Looks interesting. The "Get Binary" link doesn't work though. I was expecting
it to open the App Store, but then I saw the email form at the bottom. It
should link to that section.

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pimpl
Man, with git support it looks just perfect.

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qrohlf
The signup form isn't working for me in the latest Firefox. I click the submit
button and nothing happens...

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dshankar
That's odd! Could you please email me? dnshankar + gmail.com

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marban
"Your code, images, and other files get synced to our cloud servers."

That kills it for me.

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oakaz
My cloud dev env: Linode + Tmux + Emacs

