Member Avatar for nextsmm

Is it necessary to have computer or laptop to test the code? Did you ever seen anyone who can be perfect or master in coding whit cell phone?

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wpeckham commented: I learned Fortran IV on code paper and a keypunch machine, the computer that ran my cards was 300 miles away. not recommended +2
Jussi_1 commented: Languages need a computer and a compiler or interpreter to take human inputted and check it for errors. Without that check you are not writing code. +0
Member Avatar for JamesCherrill

In theory you should be able to code and test on a sufficiently up-market Android phone.
There are also quite few apps that teach you the basics of programming on Android or iPhones. They coud be a good place to start.
In any case it's going to be painful working on such a small screen.
With enough patience I guess you could become fairly competent at writing code, but you;ll never be able to develop skills around the toolkits and frameworks that represent 90%+ of the knwledge that a commercial programmer needs.

Did you ever seen anyone who can be perfect ?

No. Not even me :)

Member Avatar for Dani

I couldn't possibly imagine coding on a phone. It's way too cumbersome to type out symbols as frequently as I'd need to, or to indent code. However, I used to be quite competent at writing out syntactically correct code on a whiteboard while in college.

If you need to write code on the go, I would recommend connecting a portable bluetooth keyboard to a tablet such as an iPad.

commented: or good old fashioned pen and paper +16
commented: First code for me was on paper. Later it was punch cards and paper tape. +16
Member Avatar for jwenting

First programs I wrote I wrote on double spaced paper, then had reviewed by someone else who wrote his comments in between the lines.
Then the corrected program was written again on double spaced paper and submitted for review.
Rince and repeat until all parties involved are happy with the code at which point it was entered very carefully, double checking each character before entering the next, into the single computer we had for the department.

I continued the practice for a while after, writing the beginnings of a chess engine in Pascal while on vacation in a hotel in Austria, on a yellow legal pad. Didn't have a laptop, cellphones were pretty much non-existent and mobile data hadn't been heard of.

When I got home I entered the code into source files and compiled it.

Member Avatar for kasmar45

I must be a terrible programmer, I cannot even imagine writing code on paper. The way I write code it would not work out very well, because I write a small amount of instructions then build and if possible test. What I do write on paper is my flowchart so I know where I am going and how I am going to get there.

Member Avatar for JamesCherrill

That's the it was. My first real program as a trainee programmer for IBM in 1969 was hand-written over a weekend at home on a hundred-odd pages of coding forms. On Monday they went to the punch bureau to be punched into 80 column cards and by by Wednesday they were fed into an IBM 360/30 and on Thursday morning I got my first set of compiler error messages in my (physical, plastic) in box.

commented: Also, almost nightly we would hear "And that's the way it is." - Walter Cronkite +16
Member Avatar for john_111

You can certainly write pseudocode on paper, to get the general flow of what you are going to do, and then expand with more pseudocode for the first bit you intend to write. This gives you a basic structure to work on but is not actual code (although some people expand on it so much that is it gets close to real code.)
But only a true expert could write code on paper in full then transfer it to a real computer and expect it to work. It might look correct on paper, but there is only one way to check something works and that's on a computer.
Many of the hints or answers you can see here are just for small parts of the code, when people have a problem and someone can spot the error and correct it.

Member Avatar for DGPickett

I write all my code in my brain as pseudo code, and later encode it in the language of the moment. Sometime I use paper in the middle.

I have a bluetooth keyboard or two that make my phone pretty useful for data entry and programming. It is nice to have arrow keys and similar keyboard driven shortcuts.

There are online compiler sites (some buggy). They allow you to test some stuff without installing a compiler/language.

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