Python For iOS Brings Coding To iPad, iPhone

Python for iOS supplies a much-needed scratch for those with an itch to write programs for the iPad or iPhone by letting you write software for the device on the device itself. The app provides a familiar interactive interpreter interface for Python programmers plus some extras that make it easy to use, especially on an iPad.

Python for iOS is based on Python 2.7 instead of the intentionally backward-incompatible next-generation Python 3. This is a good thing for old-school Python developers like me who never migrated to Python 3. Note that the Python 2.7 fork is still maintained as a viable programming language version. Python for iOS provides the familiar command-line interactive interpreter, which looks and feels the same as you might remember from using it on some *nix server in the past. The app augments the iPad's soft keyboard with a scrollable row of mini-keys for characters that are used often. The mini-keys are small but useable.