
I Am Developing Solely on a No-Brand Android 5.1 Tablet - zdw
http://tbf-rnd.life/blog/2019/06/27/why-i-am-developing-solely-on-a-no-brand-android-5-1-tablet/
======
kayoone
What a strange article, going on about the PC history in Sweden, hacking on
the Quake2 codebase and VR headsets to one small paragraph that actually
discusses the title of the article without really answering the question in
any satisfying way.

~~~
TBF-RnD
I am starting out by using what's available so that I can apply the lessons
later. As I'm in that phase naturally there are no answers.

Does that make it clearer?

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xemdetia
No. The way that you structured this whole article is strange. It doesn't feel
as you read through that you are talking about the title nor does it feel like
each subsection is connected in either way. Generally a reader expects:
introduction to concept, hypothesis/argument based on introduced concepts,
supporting arguments for or against the hypothesis, and finally a conclusion.
I feel like you are missing the introduction entirely, so a reader has to
assume the title is your argument (as sometimes appears in news articles).
Given that argument you end up wandering through 3 sections that do not seem
related to that title, and at the end I still have no idea what you wanted to
say.

There is no conclusion or resolution to what was introduced so I still can't
fathom what you are trying to share. It feels like a situation where only half
the thoughts hit the page and since we don't know the context we can't fill in
the gaps.

Our issues are in the actual writing of the post, not as much what you are
trying to say because we can't even get to that.

~~~
TBF-RnD
First I go through steps of computer evolution: desktops -> laptops -> tablets

When desktops became popular in Sweden computers where rare in say South
America.

Now computers are not rare in South America, which is good. The bad thing is
that they are common in a consumption only format.

The problem is UI in particular text input. The solution use say gloves as
input and VR systems which I predict will be cheaper and broadly available.

Until that happens a huge amount of people are stuck with smart devices, so
I'd like to improve the situation. To get there I'm doing my work on a tablet
to get a good idea on what works and what doesn't. Why? Because I want
teenagers in the rest of the world to be able to have fun with computers as I
did.

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JasonFruit
There is barely an answer to the title question:

> So my idea is to follow the principles of universal design, that is that
> optimizations done on extreme cases translates over the whole spectrum. Also
> I’m getting valuable qualitative data on current implementations. Let me
> tell you this, for someone developing / administrating with the lingua
> Franca of computes i.e. UNIX/shell computing power is not the issue. Here
> I’m dealing with a 512 mb tablet.

I'm not sure I understand what that means, but that's all the answer we get.
(The writing quality is as poor as the reasoning.)

~~~
Konnstann
From the quote I think he means that optimizations done on shitty hardware
will translate to optimizations on good hardware, and that the computing power
of the tablet is plenty for the dev/admin tasks he uses it for(?)

~~~
JasonFruit
That's what I got, but it seems to clash with his assertion that computing
power is not the problem. Whatever — I've already devoted too much time to
this post.

~~~
TBF-RnD
In what way?

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chrischen
It takes so little Apple to make it possible for iPads to be usable for
development work, but they do not. Maybe because it will cannibalize mac
sales.

~~~
AgloeDreams
Maybe but Apple tended to (in the past) be a focused company. They decided to
not support development in the past so they straight up ran from it,
supporting zero parts of it, gaining security benefits. They know the iPad as-
is isn't designed for it and have no intent to do it. Now, when they
eventually come around, I'm sure it will be in a big, all or nothing, way.

That's kinda the best thing about Apple, they are brutally focused on solving
a problem at any cost. Thats why AirPods are so small, the apple watch is so
incredibly featured and why they build their own CPUs. Making choices like
that sometimes means realizing opportunity cost, you can't have the best of
everything.

Meanwhile, in fairness, the Mac is actually a pretty great development
platform.

~~~
maxxxxx
"Meanwhile, in fairness, the Mac is actually a pretty great development
platform.

"

Especially with the Macbook Pro they seem a little confused whether it should
be a good dev machine or a super thin high end laptop.

~~~
chrischen
Thin and light is what a portable computer is supposed to be. If you wanted
something non-portable you could get an iMac, or a mac mini, but to compromise
the products for other use cases would just be poor design.

~~~
maxxxxx
They already have the Air to be lightweight and thin. Makes sense. But there
are plenty of people who need a portable high power laptop so it would make
sense to have a Pro that has plenty of connectors, is powerful and doesn't
need to be as lightweight.

------
imtringued
I feel like this is missing the point. Why bother with an inferior tablet that
only runs a tiny subset of software specifically optimized for it? You can
just get a used Thinkpad for $100 and have a decent linux experience without
any compromises. You certainly won't have to mess around with stupid gloves to
increase your typing speed. If the people you are targeting are so poor they
can't even afford to spend $100 on a device that will last at least 5 years
then you're solving the wrong problem. They are not suffering from a lack of
inferior computing devices, they are suffering from poverty. The OLPC laptop
basically already did what you describe in your article, ultra low spec
hardware with special software written for it and it was a massive failure and
the reason was not a lack of funding. The reason is that just handing out
hardware isn't enough. The users still need to be educated. This means either
learning English so they can have access to the vast amount of information on
the internet or creating learning resources in their native language. Both
options are non trivial and require the concentrated effort of thousands of
people.

Really the takeaway should be that making things cheaper runs into diminishing
returns quickly. Frugality doesn't make you less poor. Using that crappy 500MB
RAM tablet might save you only $60 over the Thinkpad with 4GB RAM but it
requires an incredible amount of effort compared to simply earning $60 more.

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fooblitzky
I've given this a serious try a few times, on both phones and tablets, because
I am keen for an ultra-portable dev setup. Unfortunately Android falls pretty
short, even though Termux is amazing. I've never been able to stick with it
long term.

For me, a much better small and cheap dev setup is the Raspberry Pi,
particularly the new Raspberry Pi 4. Pair it with a bluetooth keyboard, a
portable Monitor, and a battery pack, and it's nearly as good as a laptop, but
much more hackable. And you get an actual GNU/Linux development environment.

~~~
TBF-RnD
I've been eyeing the rpi as well. Here's the thing though I'd rather use it
with gamepads or haptic glove input and with VR headsets. This would mean that
it truly would be mobile, i.e. you could use it on an airplane!

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thesuperbigfrog
termux ([https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)) is a great way to develop
on Android devices.

It works great and brings familiar and powerful tools to your Android devices
for development and IT needs.

~~~
TBF-RnD
This is what I am using! Couldn't cope with it. As a wm substitute of sorts I
use tmux. VIM really helps out a lot as well.

~~~
cylinder714
If I were going to do serious work with Termux, I would invest in Bluetooth
keyboard.

~~~
TBF-RnD
oh I have. Initially I used a bluetooth keyboard. Which is an acceptable
solution.

Lack of dev tools in chrome and firefox is an issue though.

Also a better window manager would help a lot. Less animated transitions and
more i3/fluxbox like functions.

Now I'm "dogfooding" in a sense so that I can hopefully get some input on how
to create a better prototype.

I don't expect to be able to make an equivalent of an desktop IDE or whatever
but rather to create experimental solutions to whatever problems that might
appear.

First of all an autocomplete that works on the input and output of the
terminal would be great. Say if you run ifconfig the output would be
automatically added to autocomplete.

Key sizes ia a problem as well where it's easy to miss keys. So I'm toying
with the idea of a dynamic keyboard (which has draw backs) with sizes in
accordance with Fitt's law.

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Kajayacht
I write code all the time using my iPad, though I'm connecting to a Raspberry
Pi over SSH and using a bluetooth keyboard.

I should blog about it.

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rijoja
Server struggling a bit with HN frontpage:

internet archive to the rescue: [https://web.archive.org/save/http://tbf-
rnd.life/blog/2019/0...](https://web.archive.org/save/http://tbf-
rnd.life/blog/2019/06/27/why-i-am-developing-solely-on-a-no-brand-
android-5-1-tablet/)

------
drtyolmck
Good for you?

