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All iPads What's the best code editor for iPad?

Ghost31

Ghost31

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 9, 2015
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There's more than I thought there would be to choose from! Some notables I've seen are textastic, codea and coda. Anybody have a favorite? I see codea actually has iPad pro support and seems to be updated regularly
 
I'm using Textastic and really like it, I've had it for awhile. He's working on iPad pro support so it works with multitasking, and that seems to be working well. Not sure when he's going to release it (I just requested to be on the beta a couple of weeks ago, from their website). I use it to update custom code on my Office365 site, have to go through some gyrations to get my code from there to Textastic and back again, but that's a MS wrinkle) I haven't tried the other ones you've mentioned
 
Best Code Editor?? Really hard to say.

I've used Pythonsia, Textastic, Coda, GoCoEdit & HTML studio... I go between Coda & Textastic, between those two... it's pretty much a race between them as far as coding goes. As of right now... Coda wins due to the fact it supports iPad Pro & SplitView as well.

I think when Textastic gets updated to support the iPad Pro and other iOS 9 features... it'll be a toss up between the two.
 
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old-wiz said:
Really when coding you want the biggest screen you can find so you can put multiple windows up and compile in the background. And like you say, coding on an iPad (no matter how big) is frightful.
Click to expand...

Not everyone needs to compile in the background. I'm a Ruby on Rails programmer (amongst many other languages) and Ruby is an interpreted language. You do still need to run tests and things like that but no big show stoppers really.

I actually find coding with only a full screen text editor to be very productive as it makes you focus on the code without relying on all the various widgets that a typical IDE often provides. If your text editor is any good then you can do most things with the keyboard (eg. opening files is Cmd-T plus a few letters of the file rather than using a tree UI) Even when coding on my MBP 15" I run my code editor in full screen mode with my browser in the adjacent virtual desktop. Then I just swipe between them using the trackpad. On my iMac 27" Retina I have enough space to have the text editor and browser side by side using split screen mode.

I've only spent a little bit of time coding on my iPad Pro so far as I tried my best to actually stop working during the holidays but from what I've tried so far it is entirely possible to code on the iPad Pro.

My setup so far includes the app Working Copy to access my git repos and Textastic to do the actual editing. Even better, you can set up Working Copy to be a document provider for Textastic so you don't need to do any sort of transfer back and forward. You just create a branch in WC then switch to Textastic and use the "Open..." dialogue to open whatever file you want to edit. Once you've finished editing you can switch back to WC and do your commit messages and push the branch. I just did a quick test using Coda and it can also access WC as a document provider although I've not used it properly for that purpose yet.

So, although it's tough to beat a 27" Retina iMac for productivity as a developer or even a 15" MBP, it is absolutely possible to use an iPad Pro for development depending on what "development" means for you. It might mean editing some code and pushing to git like it does for me or it might mean using a ssh connection via an app like "Prompt" or it might mean using a VNC client such as "Screens".
 
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Pythonista is at version 1.5, from the changelog I gathered that its python interpreter is at version 2.7.5. Version 2.0 has been submitted for review. No idea which python version this one supports.
 
Would love a decent PowerShell editor for iOS. Have seen one or two that understand the syntax but they are always very basic and have no concept of modules and add-ins etc.
 
Lately for serious coding, I've just been remoting into my Mac at home and using terminal + code editors like text wrangler. I'm hoping the next big iOS update will make the iPad even more of a pro device
 
dyn said:
Pythonista is at version 1.5, from the changelog I gathered that its python interpreter is at version 2.7.5. Version 2.0 has been submitted for review. No idea which python version this one supports.
Click to expand...
My understanding from this thread on the official Pythonista forum, is that for the foreseeable future, Pythonista will most likely stay with 2.7.*. Mostly due to technical issues and the amount of work that would be involved.
 
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The problem is mostly Python itself. Lots of developers and apps still use the 2.x version but more and more are moving towards 3.x. That means you have to support both 2.x and 3.x. On many systems this is a bit of a problem but in iOS it's just a bit more due to the technical limitations imposed by the App Store policy. There seems to be a way to do this technically which is within that policy but the Pythonista dev hasn't looked into it. Until he does Pythonista won't do 3.x.
 
Just found this thread and was going to purchase Coda since I was looking at it last week. Seemed like a good buy for $10. Just checked and they bumped the price up to $25. I think devs should charge whatever they feel their app is worth but damn, a 2.5x price hike is pretty intense! Still might buy it though since it seems to be the best.
 
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Coda has worked great for me...that sucks about the price hike, but in a way I am relieved. We aren't going to get desktop-class apps without an audience willing to pay desktop-class prices. ;)
 
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Has anybody tried both textastic and coda? If so how do they compare. I've seen articles and such, many somewhat recent but not thorough. Would be good to hear from someone who may have used them both
 
I went ahead and bought Coda and...it's great! I only need it for HTML, but it is packed with features. The learning curve was a little steep, but Panic (the devs) has a great library of help resources for the app. Very happy with the purchase. Split View / Slide Over capabilities were one of the main features that pushed me over to Coda from Textastic, but I just looked it up and it looks like Textastic supports that now too. They didn't at the time I bought Coda in early July. Anyway, +1 vote for Coda.
 
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I created devAny . I intended to write code with iPhone with mirroring but it should work on iPad. devAny requires server to connect, connector/airplay and bluetooth keyboard (and Unix knowledge a bit to set up server process)
 
ssh to small GCP instance, clone my repo with all configs and scripts to install addtional stuff - and code in vim

doable, but I so want to have proper classic thinkpad keyboard and multiple monitors...
 
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