from Hacker News

Play.js: The Node.js and React Native IDE for iPhone and iPad

by ceeK on 2/21/19, 1:01 PM with 63 comments

  • by kowdermeister on 2/22/19, 8:49 AM

    I clicked the logo 3 times. It's not a video :)

  • by martin-adams on 2/22/19, 10:03 AM

    The app is really slick. I'm surprised they were allowed to have their own window manager as Apple were very against that in the past. But I really like it. It actually is a nice take on a desktop environment on a tablet.

    I'm curious it being Node.js. It can run my js file on flight mode so isn't using a remote execution. But I didn't believe you could run node.js on an iPad due to the Apple restrictions (hopefully I'm wrong).

    That said, the whole ecosystem of Node.js is about bringing in modules. I can't see any mention of how to do that.

  • by peteforde on 2/22/19, 6:54 AM

    Is there a hidden demographic of devs building React apps on iPads? This seems very, very niche.

  • by Fiahil on 2/22/19, 2:15 PM

    Is there something similar that would allow me to use one of these on iPad Pro:

    - A fully featured linux desktop with Visual Studio Code and a terminal

    - A sandboxed terminal with persistent storage

    - A text editor and a rust compiler

    - A text editor

    I could always ssh into my raspberry pi while at home, which is my second best solution. But, if anyone has some ideas/solutions in mind that require even a large bit of tinkering, please tell me :)

  • by harryf on 2/22/19, 2:29 PM

    Cool would be if this app had some basic git(hub) support - currently seems only to support storing files locally or sharing to anything with a registered Sharing Extension (not aware of app that registers github sharing extension)

  • by nexuist on 2/22/19, 7:04 AM

    I am incredibly excited for this. As a developer, all of my mobile devices excel at doing almost everything except....development. One step closer to a realized dream.

  • by chendragon on 2/22/19, 8:24 PM

    I bought this, it looks very nice and the UI has a very high level of polish to it.

    I'm trying to use this with WebViews to hack together a multi-window, multi-tab browser thing, not sure if this is something that exists already.

    The main issue with this is that it closes all of the windows when you switch away from this app, making it quite inconvenient at the moment.

  • by keyle on 2/22/19, 7:21 AM

    Side note: I was expecting the background to be some really neat CSS trickery... Sadly just an image :'(

  • by etxm on 2/22/19, 5:13 PM

    This is pretty cool. Just killed 30 minutes while in a waiting room.

    Couldn’t figure out how to add modules.

    Auto-prettier would be awesome.

  • by tempodox on 2/22/19, 1:18 PM

    What Node modules does it download and how can I inspect them? What are the security implications?

  • by seddin on 2/23/19, 7:59 AM

    You will be much more productive on any Chromebook with a Linux distro than on a iPad.

  • by nurettin on 2/22/19, 7:38 AM

    Anything similar for android people who have some time to kill while commuting?

  • by benjaminsuch on 2/22/19, 9:55 AM

    I hate to brag but why can't you enlarge the screenshots on the App Store? Why is there no info or video what so ever to showcase the tool?

  • by kkarakk on 2/22/19, 10:47 AM

    the video doesn't seem to play...

  • by isuckatcoding on 2/22/19, 6:05 AM

    Cool but why though? I understand for those small percentage of iPad users this will be great.