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Discussion on: Developing Rails apps using an iPad

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val_baca profile image
Valentin Baca • Edited

I have an older iPad Pro and also wanted to set it up for coding.

For Editor and Console/SSH, I used Vim & Spacemacs over Mosh using Blink ($20) and a free AWS EC2 Instance.

Why? I'm a fan of Vim, but the iPad keyboard doesn't have an Esc key. Blink allows remapping 'Caps Lock' to 'Esc'.

Mosh is necessary b/c the iPad will drop your SSH connection often.

Blink is pricey for an app ($20) but it Just Works.

I haven't used it personally very much, but Termius might suit your needs best.

You could use any $remote_editor (vim, emacs, nano) over Mosh/SSH with any $ssh_app and any $cloud_host. Those are just work for me.

Honestly the hardest part of it all was getting ssh keys onto the iPad. There are guides out there for it though. For that step you'll want a real computer for the first-time setup.


Btw, here are all the apps in my "Coding" group on my iPad. Note that I use "IDE" very loosely here, since it is on an iPad:

  • Blink: ssh/mosh connections
  • Dash: documentation
  • Working Copy: git
  • Pythonista: basic python IDE
  • Playgrounds: for Swift
  • AWS Console
  • iVim: for local editing (unused, might delete)
  • Termius: alternative to Blink
  • Scheme: Lisp on iPad
  • O'Reilly: for tech books
  • Udemy: learning
  • Udacity: more learning
  • Replete REPL: ClojureScript IDE
  • Code Playground: Multi-language IDE
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bizzibody profile image
Ian bradbury

Thanks @val_baca - this is excellent information. I've not tried Code Playground - I'll investigate that.