💾 Archived View for bbs.geminispace.org › u › Morgan › 4795 captured on 2023-12-28 at 17:33:03. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-11-14)
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@ResetReboot showing Flutter to my son we were able to create an app and sideload onto a real Android phone in under an hour, no signups needed.
For iOS you would need to put your phone in dev mode and/or sign up first, if I understand correctly.
Sideloading is an important difference between iOS and Android, it's a shame to gloss over it.
Aug 27 · 4 months ago
I've written a few simple 'apps' for Android. You can install from a file, after setting permissions. I used Java and Android tools a decade ago, and coding was about as much fun as filling out a tax return
@stack I've never actually tried old school Android, but I believe it ... it's one of the reasons Flutter is so successful :)
🦀 jeang3nie · Aug 27 at 13:35:
Going to leave a shameless BSD plug here and point out that the base installs of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Dragonfly all come with a full C/C++ development environment.
🦉 ResetReboot · Aug 28 at 14:14:
@Morgan I concede that on Android, the barrier is lower than with iOS. No signups needed. But... to be able to sideload something in *most* Android phones, you need to know the cheat code of pressing certain option five times to enable the "developer options" that allow you to do such sideloading, and that's my point with Android. I admit too that I never tried Flutter myself.
The point is the same after all: It is not put there for you to immediately try and work something out. You need to find the tools, where the options are; they are not there clearly and inviting. There's no interest on it. There's not even a small interpreter to automate simple tasks.
Android is kindo of like early windows, but worse. There is no command line, so if you want a tool that diffs files, or greps, you need a GUI app. Apps are full of spyware and ads, though. I guess no one expects you to develop on the device.......
@ResetReboot hmm, are you sure? "Install unknown apps" is a main setting on my Samsung phone, not hidden at all. I don't think it's connected at all to dev mode usually? I haven't had a non-Samsung for a while though so not 100% sure.
Interpreters and VMs are another big difference :) as they are not allowed at all on iOS. That's why there are no emulators for retro consoles on iOS but lots on Android.
You can download an Android phone emulator for free, and all the dev tools, and be up and running pretty quickly even if you don't have a phone. For iOS it's also intended to be easy--but it's definitely not as free.
I agree that it's a shame about the phone experience being quite "appliancy", no interpreter on boot :) but to be fair it's what almost everyone wants. For all the important things, like banking, maps and messaging, it's also what I want. I don't want to admin my phone, most of the time. Other times it would be cool :)
🦀 jeang3nie · Aug 28 at 22:16:
The thing with locking devices down is that there's almost always a way, or multiple ways, to get around restrictions. Either by completely bypassing and/or removing them or doing unexpected things that are technically within the restrictions.
Case in point, I have Termux installed on my phone (Android). In that console environment I also have clang, make, vim, python, a rust toolchain and git. It's sandboxed, but there's an awful lot that can be done from within the sandbox. There's even an extension that gives you a programming api so that you can essentially interact with other apps using programs you write inside termux.
Another example, the Zig guys wrote their own linker for MacOs/Ios so they can completely bypass Xcode. And since you can compile C and C++ using the Zig compiler, as well as link in code from other languages, there's not much you can't do with those platforms now.
🚀 anthk_gem · Oct 10 at 06:18:
I use GNU Unifont for terminals and programming. Use it as 12px-32px depending on the resolution and everything in between with 4px sizes steps. I mean: 12px, 16px, 20px, 24px, 28px and 32px. One of them will look great. On my 1024x600 netbook screen, 16px it's the best one.
— thelambdalab.xyz/phlog/2023-08-26-Program-your-computer.txt
writing own software — Hey all! For years I am writing my own personal software and/or upgrading opensource software with features suitable personally for myself. Today I saw a gemini article, describing exactly what drives me to do this (see link above). How about you? Anybody agrees/disagrees with this?