7 ms·

Sadly, this is how things are for many of us students, I currently study bachelors in CS here in Nepal and for me and some of my friends stuck in our villages (

Sadly, this is how things are for many of us students, I currently study bachelors in CS here in Nepal and for me and some of my friends stuck in our villages (lockdown isn't still over here yet), we have been doing C assignments using editors avalialble in the playstore. Seeing these apps have millions of downloads, we're definitely not alone and I have seen many indian and other south asian friends do the same. My personal setup includes a 2$ stand and A samsung J7 phone paired with a keyboard over OTG cable. Since I have been doing this for few years I have a pretty complex setup of termux, a student credit powered VM from Azure, emacs. I have managed to develop python cli apps, jupyter notebooks, even flutter development using some port forwarding hacks.

slim 5y ago
Install termux. Learn vim
- hemanta212 5y ago
  Yep, I have to thank my conditions for forcing me to learn linux stuffs. As much as I would like to I cannot recommend it to friends who are just starting out to do it as I myself spend 3+ weeks to learn vim. They get perplexd on installing termux.
  - schwartzworld 5y ago
    Micro works on termux too without the learning curve.
- Leparamour 5y ago
  Behold the disciples of vim and Emacs at it again to lead another untainted soul astray to please their dark lords. Apage satanas!
raihansaputra 5y ago
Can you share what apps you use? I saw an editor on the tweet image, So I guess there's some different setups using different apps out there. Chrome on Android also has DevTools internally (through chrome://inspect when you connect a debuggable android to a laptop). I don't know whether that's possible to expose or not on the phone, but would be very helpful. VSCode/Monaco should also be "runnable" as they're running on JS / V8. That will open a lot of extensibility.
- hemanta212 5y ago
  For most starting out it's editors in playstore, There are editors for different langugages, I started with the pydroid editor. There you can write code and hit compile to show the output. As traversing menus by hand gets quite hard, the next approach is probably to learn termux and terminal as everything is keyboard driven. I have tried jupyternotebooks, vscode on browser but the small screen is the real blocker and you can barely see the editing field. I use termux for everything now, for websites I just open a localhost port and see it in my browser or do live reload in spare phone. Video and images are also redirected by the termux to respective apps.
  - raihansaputra 5y ago
    Yeah, desktop oriented apps such as jupyternotebook and VSCode will need UI adjustments to make it usable on the phone. That's cool to know that you can run localhost and expose the port to another phone. Thanks for sharing. Wishing you the best on your journey!
- yorwba 5y ago
  Chrome's DevTools don't have a mobile UI AFAIK, so the best available option for debugging in a mobile browser is probably Liriliri's Eruda https://eruda.liriliri.io/ https://eruda.liriliri.io/ which is a kind of embeddable debugger that runs as part of the website you're debugging.
  - raihansaputra 5y ago
    I just knew about this, definitely very cool.
mnadkvlb 5y ago
Hey, if you are interested you can reply me with your email address here, i can ship you a laptop for free (intel 5th gen i5) that i dont use anymore. it has 4gigs of ram soldered (surface pro 3). and can hopefully be used for some development.
- hemanta212 5y ago
  Thank you for such kind and generous gesture. Sadly, with how things are with the courier and customs dep. here they can charge 30-40% of orignal price to receive electronic items Fortunately, I have managed to get few python freelance gigs here and there and in a few months, I may be able to afford one.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - MontyCarloHall 5y ago
    > they can charge 30-40% of orignal price to receive electronic items Ouch. Hanlon’s razor aside, it’s almost as if the government is intentionally preventing the economy from modernizing. Really sad that some bureaucrats couldn’t see the huge long term gains of a more technology-oriented economy, and instead could only focus on whatever marginal short term revenue these tariffs generated.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      Could go the opposite way and welcome everyone and everything in, and have situations like your ports being bought by China, as is happening in African nations.
      - MontyCarloHall 5y ago
        AFAIK, China has invested considerably in controlling African port infrastructure and operations, not trade policy in the abstract. While owning a port often implies direct control over what goes through it, the converse is not true: a government can still control its own port infrastructure while being completely laissez-faire about what goes through it.
narrator 5y ago
Emacs is great for these small screens since it comes from a world where 80x24 terminals were the standard.
raizinho 5y ago
Which OS are you using?
- hemanta212 5y ago
  Termux provides its own pkg manager and compiled packages though you can setup distros using proot I havent really explored it. If you are asking about azure VM i have a ubuntu 20.04 image setup.
beilabs 5y ago
Send me through your CV if you're looking for an internship after you finish your studies. My company is based in Jwagal, Kathmandu. Check my profile for my contact details. jonathan @ domain name in profile.
e3bc54b2 5y ago
If you ever write about yiur setup, it will be a huge help! I have a friend who is constrained for comouting resources, but eager to learn nonetheless. I help out wherever I can but it is hard for me to get his perspective, because as crappy and old as they may, I still had full fledged PCs to cut my teeth on.
DrFell 5y ago
Is learning to program a human right or a human rights violation?
zepto 5y ago
You say ‘sadly’, but that is vastly better than the equipment I had when I learned these skills in 80’s and 90s.
- dharmab 5y ago
  It's sad because they're at a disadvantage to their peers.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Some of their peers, perhaps, but much less of a disadvantage than they would have been at before smartphones.
- qmmmur 5y ago
  Yes, when you were learning to develop in the 80's. This has a slight undertone of bootstrap lifting and a total lack of empathy for people who have little access to stuff that is thrown out like trash in the west. Use your brain.
  - zepto 5y ago
    > Yes, when you were learning to develop in the 80's. This has a slight undertone of bootstrap lifting and a total lack of empathy for people who have little access to stuff that is thrown out like trash in the west. Speak for yourself. You know nothing my access to computers, which was not the privileged ‘western’ fantasy you imagine. I was thinking about what it would be like to have a smartphone to learn on, and for someone who grew up without easy access to computers until later I think it would be amazing. > Use your brain. Hmmm…
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  Taking your comment in the best possible light, I see this as a general indicator that for would-be-developers, things are often so much better than they were, despite the fact that many OSes are locked down. Services like Azure and GitHub make it easy to get started, and combined with great documentation like MDN and Q&A on StackOverflow, so much more information and opportunity is available. I remember struggling to learn QBASIC as a kid in the '90s without any resources (I didn't have internet). My programs were 20 times the length they could have been if only I'd been able to learn a few basic data structures.
haltingproblem 5y ago
Very impressive. keep it up. Nepal has a thriving developer scene and we should do everything to nurture it. If you are looking for Python freelance gigs then please ping me through email in my profile.
echoradio 5y ago
Out of curiosity, is something like a Raspberry Pi Zero an option in terms of availability and having the equipment lying around to make it work (i.e. SD card, usb plug, etc.)? You should consider reaching out to the Raspberry Pi Foundation and explaining the situation. It is a registered charity and may have a program for distributing kits (and covering the associated costs) to areas or individuals who do not have easy access to hardware.
- Leparamour 5y ago
  It's probably a step-up from just using a phone or phablet but with a Raspi you'd still need (compatible) monitors. No idea what the availability and markup is for these though reliable electricity might be another issue for remote regions.
  - Tepix 5y ago
    Pretty much any flat screen tv with HDMI will do.
    - skydhash 5y ago
      Here in Haiti, it’s the electricity issue. If you’re lucky you can get electricity for 6 hour a day. In the middle of the night. That’s why people prefer portable stuff, because you can easily charge them somewhere else (in my native town, there are people that have setup charging stations with batteries and inverter).
branon 5y ago
What Android version do you run on your J7? My J7 is stuck on Android 6 and can't install Termux. It doesn't get OTA and I'm not sure how to update it.
- hemanta212 5y ago
  I have j7 max with android 8. IIRC termux should run on android 5+ maybe try to install from fdroid or search older apk versions also there is userland app that you can try.
- NotEvil 5y ago
  Use fdroid or from there github release find an compatible version. The internal env. are updated for everyone
victornomad 5y ago
wow! I'm glad that termux exist, it's such an amazing tool! I don't know if you might find it interesting but I made an open source coding tool and framework for Android that is pretty fun and fast to use. You can code using the phone or a computer using a remote editor throught Wifi (no internet required). It comes with lots of examples and remixing them is quite fun to get quick and nice results. It's called PHONK https://phonk.app https://phonk.app
- yorwba 5y ago
  Based on the description "Connect your computer and Android to the same WIFI network" I'd assume that you need at least two devices, but from your comment I gather that's not the case? Maybe you should clarify that on the landing page.
  - victornomad 5y ago
    Yes, it's possible just using the Android device. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try to improve the the landing page and make it a bit more clear :)
- pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
  The "compile it your self" link in the README (https://github.com/victordiaz/PHONK/blob/master https://github.com/victordiaz/PHONK/blob/master) is a 404. (also, it should be "yourself"), and the landing page site header is cut off on mobile, so the GitHub link doesn't show up.
  - victornomad 5y ago
    thanks for pointing it out!
Leparamour 5y ago
This is all very interesting. Good luck with your studies!
exdsq 5y ago
This is inspirational! Hope to see you move onto great things after your CS degree :)
rootsudo 5y ago
TBF this is not bad, keep going. Many people in the "west" have brand new macbooks and never installed xcode, python, etc. The device doesn't matter, the user behavior and education does.
dheera 5y ago
Suppose I had an extra PC lying around that I could donate (6th/7th gen Intel, can run Ubuntu 20.04, no monitor) -- (a) would that hypothetically be useful to you, and (b) how would I get it to you without spending on international shipping?
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> we're definitely not alone and I have seen many indian and other south asian friends do the same. Thank you for considering the struggles of others while you yourself face it. I know a self made individual from Nepal like you in U.S. working in IT with green card and might be able to guide you. Contact me if you're looking for such help. It's hard to visualize the digital divide in education induced due to the pandemic by someone who has easy access to compute, Internet and uninterrupted power supply. [Trigger warning: Suicides] Even middle class families in India spend more than 40% of their earnings on their children's education, So when the pandemic made education online, E-education startups with questionable practices became unicorns, their founders billionaires while children from marginalized, underrepresented communities quit their education forever in-favor of labor work. There were numerous cases of children committing suicides because they couldn't afford a phone or because they broke the only phone shared with their siblings for education. The hardware problem is not just because of accessibility, But also because of the lack of repairability. Many people came forward to donate their old phones, But it was often useless. Perhaps if OLPC had been successful things might have turned out differently, Maybe there's still a chance to build a OLPC using latest hardware like RPi 400. Then we need to solve the networking, Perhaps improving upon LoRAWAN could enable real time text messaging; I've been tracking this problem[1] on my platform since the start of the pandemic. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underprivileged-education-poverty https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underp...
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Perhaps if OLPC had been successful things might have turned out differently, Maybe there's still a chance to build a OLPC using latest hardware like RPi 400. At India scale they could design their own machines. Something like a ThinkPad X60 where the motherboard can attach a RPI Compute Module.
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    Rich states like Tamilnadu already have a successful free laptop program for Govt. high-school students and Govt. colleges. Recent specs were LENOVO E41-25 (81FS) with AMD A4 and 4GB memory. There are rumors that there will be an upgrade this year with HP manufacturing the laptop as Lenovo is barred from Govt. contracts in India. It's to be noted that the said state has also made all educational content for schools distributed over free-to-air channels. So a modular computer based out of RPi which can receive TV/Radio can technically cost lesser than the aforementioned full-fledged laptop. I've been brainstorming such a device with others on the thread mentioned on my parent comment.
maliker 5y ago
Since shipping hardware looks like it won’t work, what’s available to buy in terms of hardware where you are? Seems like a bigger screen would help. And then there’s the problem of money transfer. I’m guessing moving money through paypal/bitcoin/etc. doesn’t work?

slim 5y ago

Install termux. Learn vim

hemanta212 5y ago
Yep, I have to thank my conditions for forcing me to learn linux stuffs. As much as I would like to I cannot recommend it to friends who are just starting out to do it as I myself spend 3+ weeks to learn vim. They get perplexd on installing termux.
- schwartzworld 5y ago
  Micro works on termux too without the learning curve.
Leparamour 5y ago
Behold the disciples of vim and Emacs at it again to lead another untainted soul astray to please their dark lords. Apage satanas!

raihansaputra 5y ago

Can you share what apps you use? I saw an editor on the tweet image, So I guess there's some different setups using different apps out there. Chrome on Android also has DevTools internally (through chrome://inspect when you connect a debuggable android to a laptop). I don't know whether that's possible to expose or not on the phone, but would be very helpful. VSCode/Monaco should also be "runnable" as they're running on JS / V8. That will open a lot of extensibility.

hemanta212 5y ago
For most starting out it's editors in playstore, There are editors for different langugages, I started with the pydroid editor. There you can write code and hit compile to show the output. As traversing menus by hand gets quite hard, the next approach is probably to learn termux and terminal as everything is keyboard driven. I have tried jupyternotebooks, vscode on browser but the small screen is the real blocker and you can barely see the editing field. I use termux for everything now, for websites I just open a localhost port and see it in my browser or do live reload in spare phone. Video and images are also redirected by the termux to respective apps.
- raihansaputra 5y ago
  Yeah, desktop oriented apps such as jupyternotebook and VSCode will need UI adjustments to make it usable on the phone. That's cool to know that you can run localhost and expose the port to another phone. Thanks for sharing. Wishing you the best on your journey!
yorwba 5y ago
Chrome's DevTools don't have a mobile UI AFAIK, so the best available option for debugging in a mobile browser is probably Liriliri's Eruda https://eruda.liriliri.io/ https://eruda.liriliri.io/ which is a kind of embeddable debugger that runs as part of the website you're debugging.
- raihansaputra 5y ago
  I just knew about this, definitely very cool.

mnadkvlb 5y ago

Hey, if you are interested you can reply me with your email address here, i can ship you a laptop for free (intel 5th gen i5) that i dont use anymore. it has 4gigs of ram soldered (surface pro 3). and can hopefully be used for some development.

hemanta212 5y ago
Thank you for such kind and generous gesture. Sadly, with how things are with the courier and customs dep. here they can charge 30-40% of orignal price to receive electronic items Fortunately, I have managed to get few python freelance gigs here and there and in a few months, I may be able to afford one.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- MontyCarloHall 5y ago
  > they can charge 30-40% of orignal price to receive electronic items Ouch. Hanlon’s razor aside, it’s almost as if the government is intentionally preventing the economy from modernizing. Really sad that some bureaucrats couldn’t see the huge long term gains of a more technology-oriented economy, and instead could only focus on whatever marginal short term revenue these tariffs generated.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Could go the opposite way and welcome everyone and everything in, and have situations like your ports being bought by China, as is happening in African nations.
    - MontyCarloHall 5y ago
      AFAIK, China has invested considerably in controlling African port infrastructure and operations, not trade policy in the abstract. While owning a port often implies direct control over what goes through it, the converse is not true: a government can still control its own port infrastructure while being completely laissez-faire about what goes through it.

narrator 5y ago

Emacs is great for these small screens since it comes from a world where 80x24 terminals were the standard.

raizinho 5y ago

Which OS are you using?

hemanta212 5y ago
Termux provides its own pkg manager and compiled packages though you can setup distros using proot I havent really explored it. If you are asking about azure VM i have a ubuntu 20.04 image setup.

beilabs 5y ago

Send me through your CV if you're looking for an internship after you finish your studies. My company is based in Jwagal, Kathmandu. Check my profile for my contact details. jonathan @ domain name in profile.

e3bc54b2 5y ago

If you ever write about yiur setup, it will be a huge help! I have a friend who is constrained for comouting resources, but eager to learn nonetheless. I help out wherever I can but it is hard for me to get his perspective, because as crappy and old as they may, I still had full fledged PCs to cut my teeth on.

DrFell 5y ago

Is learning to program a human right or a human rights violation?

zepto 5y ago

You say ‘sadly’, but that is vastly better than the equipment I had when I learned these skills in 80’s and 90s.

dharmab 5y ago
It's sad because they're at a disadvantage to their peers.
- zepto 5y ago
  Some of their peers, perhaps, but much less of a disadvantage than they would have been at before smartphones.
qmmmur 5y ago
Yes, when you were learning to develop in the 80's. This has a slight undertone of bootstrap lifting and a total lack of empathy for people who have little access to stuff that is thrown out like trash in the west. Use your brain.
- zepto 5y ago
  > Yes, when you were learning to develop in the 80's. This has a slight undertone of bootstrap lifting and a total lack of empathy for people who have little access to stuff that is thrown out like trash in the west. Speak for yourself. You know nothing my access to computers, which was not the privileged ‘western’ fantasy you imagine. I was thinking about what it would be like to have a smartphone to learn on, and for someone who grew up without easy access to computers until later I think it would be amazing. > Use your brain. Hmmm…
TimTheTinker 5y ago
Taking your comment in the best possible light, I see this as a general indicator that for would-be-developers, things are often so much better than they were, despite the fact that many OSes are locked down. Services like Azure and GitHub make it easy to get started, and combined with great documentation like MDN and Q&A on StackOverflow, so much more information and opportunity is available. I remember struggling to learn QBASIC as a kid in the '90s without any resources (I didn't have internet). My programs were 20 times the length they could have been if only I'd been able to learn a few basic data structures.

haltingproblem 5y ago

Very impressive. keep it up. Nepal has a thriving developer scene and we should do everything to nurture it. If you are looking for Python freelance gigs then please ping me through email in my profile.

echoradio 5y ago

Out of curiosity, is something like a Raspberry Pi Zero an option in terms of availability and having the equipment lying around to make it work (i.e. SD card, usb plug, etc.)? You should consider reaching out to the Raspberry Pi Foundation and explaining the situation. It is a registered charity and may have a program for distributing kits (and covering the associated costs) to areas or individuals who do not have easy access to hardware.

Leparamour 5y ago
It's probably a step-up from just using a phone or phablet but with a Raspi you'd still need (compatible) monitors. No idea what the availability and markup is for these though reliable electricity might be another issue for remote regions.
- Tepix 5y ago
  Pretty much any flat screen tv with HDMI will do.
  - skydhash 5y ago
    Here in Haiti, it’s the electricity issue. If you’re lucky you can get electricity for 6 hour a day. In the middle of the night. That’s why people prefer portable stuff, because you can easily charge them somewhere else (in my native town, there are people that have setup charging stations with batteries and inverter).

branon 5y ago

What Android version do you run on your J7? My J7 is stuck on Android 6 and can't install Termux. It doesn't get OTA and I'm not sure how to update it.

hemanta212 5y ago
I have j7 max with android 8. IIRC termux should run on android 5+ maybe try to install from fdroid or search older apk versions also there is userland app that you can try.
NotEvil 5y ago
Use fdroid or from there github release find an compatible version. The internal env. are updated for everyone

victornomad 5y ago

wow! I'm glad that termux exist, it's such an amazing tool! I don't know if you might find it interesting but I made an open source coding tool and framework for Android that is pretty fun and fast to use. You can code using the phone or a computer using a remote editor throught Wifi (no internet required). It comes with lots of examples and remixing them is quite fun to get quick and nice results. It's called PHONK https://phonk.app https://phonk.app

yorwba 5y ago
Based on the description "Connect your computer and Android to the same WIFI network" I'd assume that you need at least two devices, but from your comment I gather that's not the case? Maybe you should clarify that on the landing page.
- victornomad 5y ago
  Yes, it's possible just using the Android device. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try to improve the the landing page and make it a bit more clear :)
pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
The "compile it your self" link in the README (https://github.com/victordiaz/PHONK/blob/master https://github.com/victordiaz/PHONK/blob/master) is a 404. (also, it should be "yourself"), and the landing page site header is cut off on mobile, so the GitHub link doesn't show up.
- victornomad 5y ago
  thanks for pointing it out!

Leparamour 5y ago

This is all very interesting. Good luck with your studies!

exdsq 5y ago

This is inspirational! Hope to see you move onto great things after your CS degree :)

rootsudo 5y ago

TBF this is not bad, keep going. Many people in the "west" have brand new macbooks and never installed xcode, python, etc. The device doesn't matter, the user behavior and education does.

dheera 5y ago

Suppose I had an extra PC lying around that I could donate (6th/7th gen Intel, can run Ubuntu 20.04, no monitor) -- (a) would that hypothetically be useful to you, and (b) how would I get it to you without spending on international shipping?

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

> we're definitely not alone and I have seen many indian and other south asian friends do the same. Thank you for considering the struggles of others while you yourself face it. I know a self made individual from Nepal like you in U.S. working in IT with green card and might be able to guide you. Contact me if you're looking for such help. It's hard to visualize the digital divide in education induced due to the pandemic by someone who has easy access to compute, Internet and uninterrupted power supply. [Trigger warning: Suicides] Even middle class families in India spend more than 40% of their earnings on their children's education, So when the pandemic made education online, E-education startups with questionable practices became unicorns, their founders billionaires while children from marginalized, underrepresented communities quit their education forever in-favor of labor work. There were numerous cases of children committing suicides because they couldn't afford a phone or because they broke the only phone shared with their siblings for education. The hardware problem is not just because of accessibility, But also because of the lack of repairability. Many people came forward to donate their old phones, But it was often useless. Perhaps if OLPC had been successful things might have turned out differently, Maybe there's still a chance to build a OLPC using latest hardware like RPi 400. Then we need to solve the networking, Perhaps improving upon LoRAWAN could enable real time text messaging; I've been tracking this problem[1] on my platform since the start of the pandemic. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underprivileged-education-poverty https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underp...

908B64B197 5y ago
> Perhaps if OLPC had been successful things might have turned out differently, Maybe there's still a chance to build a OLPC using latest hardware like RPi 400. At India scale they could design their own machines. Something like a ThinkPad X60 where the motherboard can attach a RPI Compute Module.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  Rich states like Tamilnadu already have a successful free laptop program for Govt. high-school students and Govt. colleges. Recent specs were LENOVO E41-25 (81FS) with AMD A4 and 4GB memory. There are rumors that there will be an upgrade this year with HP manufacturing the laptop as Lenovo is barred from Govt. contracts in India. It's to be noted that the said state has also made all educational content for schools distributed over free-to-air channels. So a modular computer based out of RPi which can receive TV/Radio can technically cost lesser than the aforementioned full-fledged laptop. I've been brainstorming such a device with others on the thread mentioned on my parent comment.

maliker 5y ago

Since shipping hardware looks like it won’t work, what’s available to buy in terms of hardware where you are? Seems like a bigger screen would help. And then there’s the problem of money transfer. I’m guessing moving money through paypal/bitcoin/etc. doesn’t work?