zlacker

>>iBelie+(OP)
My primary concern with this is that different applications are inherently optimized for the platform on which they were originally designed. There are some applications that have a very dense UI because there's simply alot of functionality that the program handles (think of a video editor, an IDE, etc). Trying to slim down those applications to make them reactive so that they will scale onto a phone or tablet just seems silly, and I fear that in the name of making "everything work everywhere", we're going to compromise a bunch of apps that worked beautifully on one platform in favor of making them work adequately on several platforms.

I mean, if someone said, "I've successfully ported Vim to Android!", my first thought would be, "Why in god's name would I want to run vim on my phone?"*

* Ruling out, of course, someone plugging their phone into external KVM.

>>Admira+K7
I have the GPD Win that I bought a couple years ago, which is more or a less a Nintendo-DS-Sized computer running "real" Windows, and I love it. I can do programming on the train, even while standing up, as well as use all the tooling that I like, including Vim actually. The only limitation for me has honestly been Windows, since I'm more of a Unixey guy.

Something that has always bothered me is that smartphones are basically supercomputers nowadays, at least compared to what we had in the 90's, but I feel incredibly limited in what I can actually do with my iPhone. I can't easily code stuff for the iPhone in Haskell, I can't open up multiple "tabs" of videos on the YouTube app, and even a lot of the apps that do get ported over end up having incredibly limited "mobile optimized" versions.

I would absolutely love a phone that could let me run the "real" versions of apps when I need to. Ubuntu Touch was trying this, and I honestly don't think I'm unique in this desire.

>>tomber+Ya
> Something that has always bothered me is that smartphones are basically supercomputers

They're only comparable to 90s supercomputers in the sense of compute power.

But when it comes to productivity they are fundamentally limited by their physical size and limited input/output real estate vs a desktop or laptop, or even 90s supercomputer with a 25" CRT and big clicky keyboard.

Even laptop keyboards use nearly full size keys, just as piano keys come in a pretty standard size, regardless of the size of the piano.

Programming on a phone directly would be like cooking for a banquet on a single camp stove instead of a full kitchen. You could do it, but why?

And sure, you can hook up a keyboard, mouse, and external monitor to some Android phones, but at that point, it's hardly a phone anymore.