From my spoiled western perspective it seems surprisingly difficult to either just send him the money or have a laptop delivered to him. I wouldnt have guessed that upfront...
If it would be less trouble (because of customs and other external factors), and assuming it can help, maybe a phone keyboard can also be considered? An OTG cable plus a normal USB keyboard might also be a solution if portability is not a requirement.
I had a talk with him and it seemed like the best fit. In the end, MacBooks are the best use of money when in comes to laptop. Battery life is crucial due to frequent blackouts.
I'd have preferred something from new Intel ones but I couldn't find anything available there.
I also write code using my phone when I'm on a bus or the subway. It requires some patience but after getting used to it, the experience is surprisingly pleasant especially if you're familiar with terminal-based tools. My environment consists of:
- Galaxy S24 Ultra
- Termius: I think it is the best terminal emulator and SSH client on Android. The sad thing is that the paid version is a bit too expensive. ($10 per month, no permanent option)
- tmux: Mobile connections are brittle so it is a must.
- Vim: Allows me to navigate the code freely without using arrow keys, which is really useful on the touch keyboard.
Not that of a big deal, but the thing that I think is more pleasant on the phone than on the PC is that I can use my fingerprint to log in to the remote server. The fingerprint is stored in the TPM so it is safe. It feels magical!
Edit: The biggest pain point for me was the limited width of the smartphone screen. It is a bit hard to skim over the code quickly because most lines are severely cut. Text wrapping helps this but personally I hate text wrapping. Keeping landscape mode is not an option because the code area is completely hidden when the touch keyboard is displayed. That's why foldable phones are great for coding, as they have a wider screen. My previous phone was Galaxy Fold and it was a wonderful coding machine.
Try pairing tmux with mosh, it's how I've been working for years whenever I'm forced to admin through a brittle straw. Mosh combats lag pretty well and doesn't care if your connection drops intermittently. https://mosh.org/
I tried Mosh but it didn't fit my taste. It tries to "predict" the state of the screen before being acknowledged by the server, but sometimes the prediction is wrong and Mosh reverts the cursor movement and redraws the affected area of the terminal. For example, when I'm using split windows in Vim or tmux, Mosh allows typed characters to overflow beyond the separator, briefly, until being told "no" by the server. Personally I find this behavior very disturbing. Enduring higher lags was more bearable to me.
I wish I could do it. I find even just texting annoying. Also Galaxy phone.
I wonder if my fingers may just be too fat. Although I don't think they are.
Actually I hate doing most things through a phone, and e.g. if a food delivery app has a desktop version I will always use that given the chance.
I have been really impressed lately using Samsung Dex on a XReal Air 2. AR glasses have really improved in the recent years. It gives you a better screen than many small laptops.
For longer trips (train, airplane), add a mechanical wireless bluetooth keyboard (my choice would be a NuPhy Air 75) to feel like a king. For the occasional browser + SSH on the go, it's better (less space + better keyboard + larger screen experience) than bringing my 13" laptop (+ phone).
Gosh they look interesting.
But ridiculously customer unfriendly product naming, and a website that doesn't provide clear information on international shipping just raises so many red flags for me.
Mosh was suggested in another comment, but I’ve found that et (https://eternalterminal.dev/) suits my needs better.
It does nothing to fix lag, but connection failures are handled without a hitch, same session resumes like normal on spotty train wifi and mobile data.
Just the default one. I tried some alternative keyboards and they are better in some ways but in the end the default keyboard was enough. Termius provides input of some special keys (e.g. Ctrl, Alt, Esc, Tab, Home, End) so that's another reason why the default keyboard is enough.
I'm getting a little bit of anxiety just reading about this. I hate typing on phone especially if the text haa symbols mixed in. I mistype a lot more often on phone and often somehow skip entire words. (Don't know what the cause of this is.)
I am guessing they using some specialised keyboard that makes it easier to type symbols etc.
Same observation. I don't know how or why, but I seemingly words, and I absolutely have to reread what I wrote, and usually do updates after that. And every time I'm surprised by how bad mistakes I made.
There's some okay text editors for Android, Hacker's Keyboard (which I still use) and of course Termux. The tools are all there, but when I tried to write simple little scripts on mobile, it was all the nightmare I thought it would be.
Been using smartphone touchscreens for a decade+ now and still feel like an old man that just can't get used to this new-fangled way of doing things. You can look back at my comment history to see the types of errors my brain, thumbs and far-sighted eyes love to produce. I honestly do not know what I was thinking when I decided to practice code on these devices, but that quickly ended.
I think best when I'm writing (code) though. It keeps my mind focused especially on the task at hand. I've been given feedback that I jump too quickly into code, but that's the way for me to focus. I would prefer to write a quick throwaway prototype as opposed to form some sort of plan or document. Otherwise my mind will wonder or I get some sort of anxiety.
In developing countries like India - a surprisingly high number of students do not have access to a computer. I have a lot of friends who had to learn enough on phone to bootstrap into buying their first laptop.
One of my best friend - in his village in the hills they did not have electricity but the government had sent a PC. No one was allowed to go close to it but that was the very thing that inspired him to learn computers. Today he's one of the sharpest linux/infosec folks in my small circle.
Thats true most people in Pakistan don't own a laptop and don't ever intend to buy one. It makes me irrationally angry when people are buying flight tickets on the phone even though having access to a laptop.
I buy flight and other tickets on the phone all the time. Autofill for CC details, quick access to PayPal and other things are all there. One swipe away.
Transport and booking apps (Airbnb, etc) are all pretty decent and similar to the speed on a laptop. But I can do that while walking the dog, while on the bus, and many other situations where I’m not at a proper computer.
Elder millennial (1982), so it’s not just a young people thing.
Back in the 90's, I created something like a mortgage calculator on my HP48gx. It was about 1500 "lines" (a line being maybe at most 30 chars) , all keyed in using only the calculator. The mind is capable of many things.
The HP48 has a pretty good keyboard. I remember someone who typed as fast as most people would do on a full keyboard, using some weird kind of touch typing with the hands vertically positioned on both sides of the calculator.
The problem is more about the software. The HP48 is pretty slow, and has a tendency to lose your data a bit too easily. There are some editors written in assembly that are good enough though, and since you had a GX, you could use memory card backups.
Yes, the keyboard space was large enough that you could get into a routine of using both hands. Scrolling through the code was a nightmare though, it was not the fastest IDE at the time.
I wrote a few programs on my HP48GX (which still works perfectly). Programs about Maxwell formulas and Einstein's effects where a little bit more complicated. Not once did I think, "But this is exhausting!". However, I stayed under 1000 lines.
But now, if something gets a little bit more complicated or repetitive in my cozy Neovim environment I think more about how to avoid this with ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf… maybe a restrictive environment is sometimes better to actually build something?
My HP48 from high school (90‘s) is one of my prized possessions. It still works.
And I still can’t use a calculator that does not use Reverse Polish Notation…
I was looking for a reference but I am afraid it is lost in some news group in the distant past but my understanding is that all of Meta Kernel was written directly on an HP calculator.
I been writing programs for over 50 years and I shuddered at the thought of doing it on a phone. My first thought, he must be a masochist. Then I thought he might not had anything better to work on. I'm a touch typist who doesn't need to look at the keyboard why typing. Given my cataracts and tiny screen and tiny keyboard, it is torture to type on my phone.
Someone made a comment that millennials are the first and last generation who grew up with desktop PCs, discussion forums on the raw internet.
Kids these days are mostly using smartphones, tablets and apps.
We are used to think that younger people know more about computers, but in the case of desktop computers this might not be the case.
I’m a touch typist as well but use a combination of swype/dictation on mobile and pretty much all my writing there looks like this. I will bang out a message, then have to painstakingly edit all the mistakes. It’s an annoying downgrade in communication experience.
Strange, any phone today would be better than most hardware we had 30 yrs ago. In the 90's I had monitors with resolutions of 320x240, limited info on the screen. Things were slow. If you gave me the option of using a phone from today or a computer from then, back then and today, I'll definitely pick the phone. We don't code at the speed of thought, we poke at the computer one key at a time, one register at a time.
Not about the speed, it's about the comfort for me. And 30 years ago would be the mid 90s so most people had 14 inch monitors that supported 640x480 or even SVGA at 800 x 600 with ease.
To me, it doesn't matter how many pixels your phone is displaying when you're limited to a whopping 6 inch diagonal.
And I can't even imagine torturously attempting to touch type on the phones keyboard (which is displacing even more of your limited phone screen), versus a dedicated mechanical keyboard which was also common at the time.
I wrote code with a cheap logitech keyboard and a phone. The keyboard keeps phone upright. The screen is enough for text. But touchscreen for typing? nope thanks give me a 30 yr old computer
God knows how fast I could type on a BB. It was my first phone which was my dad's old phone and it got me into WhatsApp and browsing on the phone.
Jeez, I remember my dad might have been one of the 10 people who ended up paying for WhatsApp.
In my first year of having it, I think it was extended for free and I think it was acquired later by FB.
This is irrelevant to coding, but boy I miss what it felt like (as a child) to type on a T9 predictive keypad. Once you get used to it it's easy to 'know' by muscle memory when the desired word is the second or third choice, so you end up typing with basically the same number of keystrokes as qwerty but with only 10 keys.
Then again maybe this is only possible with the superpower of childhood cognition. I recently witnessed a friends 9yo playing with a 1940s typewriter I'd restored. Having basically never used a full sized keyboard before, within about 2 minutes she'd familiarized herself with the qwerty layout, figured out how to turn the shift lock on and off, deduced the correct key action to bounce the hammers off the platten without them clashing, and figured out how to change colours. All this took me at least 20 minutes.
I loved my blackberry but typing on it was way slower than on a touchscreen with predictive text. Especially when you need non-alphabetical characters.
Physical discomforts of writing a novel on a smartphone aside, I am trying to wrap my head around trying to do the same with a device that needs T9 as input. I type slow on a touchscreen as it is, frequently losing my train of thought before I can get my whole comment out, the comments themselves often turning into meandering adventures in Fuzzy Logic Land as a result. I cannot imagine banging one out on a number pad, and I lived through that era, even working a job where cell phones were a no-no so we got pretty good at firing off quick texts without having to look at the keys. Short messages? Can do. Lengthy HN replies? Count me out.
I understand why we ended up with touch screens but I do miss physical keyboards. Swipe typing is fast-ish - but only for dictionary words, not punctuation, etc.
I think there's a lot of us that do more or less serious programming on our handhelds. The author of Picolisp does a lot of development on a tablet, and has created his own software keyboard: https://software-lab.de/penti.html
I've been using it for years, and have solved crises at work with it and Termux by SSH:ing from my phone into a box attached to the right VPN and jumped from there to control over production. Tablets are really nice in this area, they have a lot of battery time and one can lay in bed and do the stuff in vim, tmux, &c. as one usually does, just a little bit slower due to software keyboards being a bit less efficient.
Readit News
Transparent ledger of donations: https://hcb.hackclub.com/oxy2dev-laptop/transactions
We need about $500 more USD to get him an M1 MacBook Air (they are more expensive in Bangladesh, where he is based).
GitHub thread with details: https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/218. Here is a Reddit comment from the author showing this is the official fundraiser: https://old.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/1h7vhmg/bro_been_de...
Source: Am from 3rd world country.
I'd have preferred something from new Intel ones but I couldn't find anything available there.
Edit: The biggest pain point for me was the limited width of the smartphone screen. It is a bit hard to skim over the code quickly because most lines are severely cut. Text wrapping helps this but personally I hate text wrapping. Keeping landscape mode is not an option because the code area is completely hidden when the touch keyboard is displayed. That's why foldable phones are great for coding, as they have a wider screen. My previous phone was Galaxy Fold and it was a wonderful coding machine.
For longer trips (train, airplane), add a mechanical wireless bluetooth keyboard (my choice would be a NuPhy Air 75) to feel like a king. For the occasional browser + SSH on the go, it's better (less space + better keyboard + larger screen experience) than bringing my 13" laptop (+ phone).
It does nothing to fix lag, but connection failures are handled without a hitch, same session resumes like normal on spotty train wifi and mobile data.
I am guessing they using some specialised keyboard that makes it easier to type symbols etc.
Deleted Comment
There's some okay text editors for Android, Hacker's Keyboard (which I still use) and of course Termux. The tools are all there, but when I tried to write simple little scripts on mobile, it was all the nightmare I thought it would be.
Been using smartphone touchscreens for a decade+ now and still feel like an old man that just can't get used to this new-fangled way of doing things. You can look back at my comment history to see the types of errors my brain, thumbs and far-sighted eyes love to produce. I honestly do not know what I was thinking when I decided to practice code on these devices, but that quickly ended.
Either way, very painful
One of my best friend - in his village in the hills they did not have electricity but the government had sent a PC. No one was allowed to go close to it but that was the very thing that inspired him to learn computers. Today he's one of the sharpest linux/infosec folks in my small circle.
Transport and booking apps (Airbnb, etc) are all pretty decent and similar to the speed on a laptop. But I can do that while walking the dog, while on the bus, and many other situations where I’m not at a proper computer.
Elder millennial (1982), so it’s not just a young people thing.
The problem is more about the software. The HP48 is pretty slow, and has a tendency to lose your data a bit too easily. There are some editors written in assembly that are good enough though, and since you had a GX, you could use memory card backups.
But now, if something gets a little bit more complicated or repetitive in my cozy Neovim environment I think more about how to avoid this with ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf… maybe a restrictive environment is sometimes better to actually build something?
The HP48 series lives on as a free android app, for all the RPN fans. =3
We are used to think that younger people know more about computers, but in the case of desktop computers this might not be the case.
Most computer hobbyists hate seeing talent hobbled by circumstance. Our local telecom has a nonprofit up-cycling program for these kids. =3
:)
To me, it doesn't matter how many pixels your phone is displaying when you're limited to a whopping 6 inch diagonal.
And I can't even imagine torturously attempting to touch type on the phones keyboard (which is displacing even more of your limited phone screen), versus a dedicated mechanical keyboard which was also common at the time.
https://www.geeknative.com/6955/the-painted-man-written-on-a...
Like computer keyboards, it also had a ctrl key. That means that I can ctrl+c and ctrl+v to copy paste.
Then again maybe this is only possible with the superpower of childhood cognition. I recently witnessed a friends 9yo playing with a 1940s typewriter I'd restored. Having basically never used a full sized keyboard before, within about 2 minutes she'd familiarized herself with the qwerty layout, figured out how to turn the shift lock on and off, deduced the correct key action to bounce the hammers off the platten without them clashing, and figured out how to change colours. All this took me at least 20 minutes.
You might be interested in https://www.clicks.tech/
I have no idea if it’s good or not, just remembered it exists.
Also, python programs :D
Cell phone novels has been a thing for over 20 years and they were originally written using numpad cellphones.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_phone_novel
I've been using it for years, and have solved crises at work with it and Termux by SSH:ing from my phone into a box attached to the right VPN and jumped from there to control over production. Tablets are really nice in this area, they have a lot of battery time and one can lay in bed and do the stuff in vim, tmux, &c. as one usually does, just a little bit slower due to software keyboards being a bit less efficient.