On: Undiscoverable UI Madness

[ssalazar]

Porting the toolchain is arguably trivial, but making a pleasant developer experience on a computing platform that may or may not have a keyboard is another concern entirely.

[saagarjha → ssalazar]

Making a pleasant developer experience is a lot easier than getting iPad to load your compiled code at the moment, and the current state of developer tools reflects this.

[comex → saagarjha]

Easier for everyone other than Apple itself. But GP was suggesting that Apple build it, and Apple can easily modify their own code signing restrictions.

[saagarjha → comex]

I took the comment to mean that developers should bootstrap it. Perhaps I misinterpreted it…

[ssalazar → saagarjha]

I see, your gripe is having to be a part of the Apple developer program to develop for iOS. A 10+ years stale debate.

[saagarjha → ssalazar]

No, my issue is with the fact that even with a developer program account you cannot compile and run code directly on your device.

[catblast → saagarjha]

Sure you can. With a developer account nothing is stopping you from running a compiler on your device. You don’t need root or jailbreak to run a compiler.

As other poster alluded to. It’s not the difficulty, it’s that given the environment of the iPad, there isn’t a compelling use case.

[saagarjha → catblast]

> Sure you can. With a developer account nothing is stopping you from running a compiler on your device. You don’t need root or jailbreak to run a compiler.

You can run a compiler, but you cannot run the generated code.

[90minuteAPI → saagarjha]

This is news to me as an iOS developer. I wonder what I’ve been doing all this time.

[saagarjha → 90minuteAPI]

Compiling code on your computer and then transferring it to your device?