What made you buy Codea?

Though I have limited interest in Codea’s strength, making action games, I was looking for an IDE on the iPad and Lua is my favorite language.

I forget when I was known Codea, but still remember the Advertising slogan ; Codea is GarageBand of software, you can create program much easier more than ever, and realised it. Codea is wonderful! but I would like to ask you stability of the text editor, it sometime break my code. I am expecting progress of Codea.

@Bri_G Sorry for the delayed response. No Mac, only iPad and iPhone for universal.

Just found this thread and I’d like to share my experience.

I got my brand new original iPad at the end of 2010. I was falling in love right away with this new Apple’s magical device. I’m a professional programmer in my daily life. But programming is also my hobby. I’d like to know what is it like to write a program directly on my iPad. So, I was looking for programming apps for iPad in the App Store.

I found many programming apps but they’re either too complicated or too simple or unable to work offline. Then I found an app named Codify (the original name of Codea). Lua is a simple programming language, I grasp it at almost no time. Back then, Codea wasn’t as good as it is now. However –in my opinion– it was the best programming app at that time. I was falling in love for the second time. I love that I could write a program while I’m in bed, or in the car, or in the sofa, or during a trip, etc. Something that can’t be done by using my laptop.

With an excellent programming app available on my iPad, I could also playing around with it about something related to my job as well, like testing some algorithms, brainstorming some ideas, making dynamic mockups, etc. I also use Codea to teach my kids some programming lessons. And they love it. For quite some time, Codea became the most used app on my iPad both at home and office.

I only have one major complaint about Codea: there’s no built-in support for native UI builder. Something like provided by the Pythonista app. Though I like to write some little games now and then, however I’m a desktop app programmer in my daily life. Ever since I found Pythonista app, I use it more than Codea, simply because this feature alone. Although for visual and game programming, Codea is still the best app.

I hope Codea would get better and provide more complete programming features such as the native UI builder, visual debugger, local Git, direct GitHub connection, iCloud storage, etc. Codea is my first love for programming app on iPad. And everyone knows that first love lasts forever. :slight_smile:

Thank you.

I got codea because I want to be a programmer and it was the best one out there so why not get the best

We got Codea after an internet search, focusing on being able to create a game on the iPad from scratch, while we are off grid with our van. It resulted in “Jojoes Trash Attack” which you can find on the AppStore here: https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/jojoes-trash-attack/id1303081092?mt=8

Working on the second game now, I researched about other (desktop) engines like Unity, Game Maker Studio or Buildbox but their monthly and expensive pricing is just a no go. That’s why I decided to stick with Codea.

Ive been a little kid back then when I was absolutely interested in coding. My father used to write “code” in the search or smt else. He found codea and installed it. That’s it actually :slight_smile:

My father installed it when i was approximately 7/8 years old.
I liked to play the game examples.
I started to change number values in the game and i watched what happened.
When i was approximately 9 years old the idea came to make my own game.
Someone gave me a Raspberry Pi with scratch!
I started to program with scratch, after i learned scratch i wanted to make a game with code and not with blocks.
My father was computer scientist so he teached me to program with codea.
Now im ten years old!

I started my “coding” journey with the command and conquer red alert aftermath map editor of all places. Used to spend DAYS making maps and on the weekends my dad and brothers would go to war on them while I took notes on how to improve them. Then we graduated to Warcraft 2 and Starcraft 1 where I did the same. However:

Starcraft 1 had scripting and I could make custom scenarios for my family to battle through instead of just maps to go 0 to 100 on. That changed everything. I remember I used to sneak staying up till 3/4 am scripting and building out maps. One night I looked behind me and saw my dad puzzling over what he was seeing (I was 10) I thought for sure I was busted but he instead asked me to explain what I had been making. He was so impressed he told me not to stay up so late anymore cause sleep is important. And left me to it. My mom told me the next day that my dad had come to bed and said “that boy is smarter than I will ever be” if you know my dad, you know that is the greatest complement he can give someone. So I was hooked.

From there I went to web design. Then joined the military as a programmer and learned c#. Then as3/as5 for flash. Got training from digitrain in Dallas TX for as5 to be a trainer. Did a 4 year enlistment. When I got out I used my Gi bill to increase my knowledge wherever I saw fit through college. Found unity and unreal engine. Hated them both. Mainly because they are on PC and PC is the worst now. My wife introduced me to apple tech and I was instantly impressed. The modern tech landscape for apple is wonderful so I decided to port over. I don’t have 2k for a modern air laptop with apple silicon processor so I started looking into what I could do with the iPad. All signs pointed to codea so I did my research. Made sure I could publish to Xcode from it. And once I was satisfied with my findings I downloaded it.

Honestly: codea is the best $14 I ever spent. Hands down.

The amount of love and care given to this program by @Simeon and friends is breathtaking.

The ease of use and ready availability of examples and libraries built ready to plug and play as dependencies for 3D makes me cry and thank God.

The built in voxel capabilities make the jump painless from my hardcore 2D 2.5D viewpoint style to full 3D game making.

In short. Codea changes the game. Big time. If you have an iPad. You can create. That. Is. Insane.

Thank you for making this tool.

TLDR: I’m 31. I’m a pro. Codea is the best $14 I have ever spent. I found codea searching specifically on google for “an app to make games using ONLY iPad” and codea was the only solution worth noting.

Suggestion: “codea” gets auto corrected to “code” by the google search engine. In order to find it you have to wrap codea in quotes. It’s a search inhibitor built in to google’s auto correct. I’d start there when broadening my visibility @simeon

Thank you for your time,
-Timmy_theBarbarian

@Timmy_theBarbarian Kind of sounds like how a lot of us started with Codea. Doing a search for programming on the iPad. Glad to read you’re enjoying yourself and it only gets better as you write more code.

Agreed entirely! This is hands down the most fun I have ever had coding!