Start coding from an iPad
The future of personal computing is already available for developers
--
Relying on my own computer as my development environment sounds to me so strange after using a remote server for a year.
Can you remember how your life was before Google Docs? How painful it was to track which version of your finance spreadsheet was up to date when maintaining multiple backups?
Oh! Do you even remember doing backups? Life before Dropbox…?
Now look at your computer. In a few years, it will become OLD, SLOW and USELESS.
Let me try again — look at your computer and ask yourself this question: WHY would you want to replace it in few years? Maybe it will not be fast enough? Or perhaps it will not have the most recent operating system?
Everything is going to the cloud and is requiring less and less computing power. Bottom line: Your development machine can be on the cloud!
Your development machine can be on the cloud!
It’s been one year since I switched, and it feels great. Here are some of the benefits:
- I can work from any computer;
- My localhost is a URL I can share with others for a quick glance without worrying about setting up a production or test environment, or exposing my computer to the internet.
- I can work from my iPad using an SSH terminal app.
- I can access it with my iPhone and check what is going on.
- I can have time consuming tasks executing on the cloud without even having a computer open.
- When I feel in need of more computing power, I can upgrade my computer instantly, just by paying a few cents more per hour.
- If need a 64GB Memory with 20 Cores for a 1 hour task, it will cost less than $1 (which, by the way, is an unreal scenario, you probably will need much less computing power, and maybe pay $1 for a whole day of improved performance)
- My development environment is connected to a 1 GB/sec. network interface, which is lightning fast.
- I can backup or clone the machine with a single click.
- I can use Mosh to remove the responsiveness lag and make it feels just like using the terminal local.
This list could go on and on, but I just want to inspire your curiosity.
Well, I gave it a shot and never looked back. If you want to try it, start here.
Enjoy the future.
