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Building a Device-Agnostic Web Development Setup 2025 Edition: My Journey with an iPad
Over the past decade, I’ve written about my unconventional journey as a developer using an iPad for web development. To me, being device-agnostic is the ultimate freedom — working from anywhere, on any device. I’ve even debugged critical issues from my phone, riding a bus in Seattle — before mobile tools had evolved to what we see today.
While my setup has evolved with time, the core components remain simple: a remote server, SSH, Vim, and a terminal session manager. It’s a reliable system, but as new tools and IDEs have emerged, I’ve often felt like the “grandpa coder.” My setup can handle everything the modern ones can (and often more), but I don’t have the shiny new IDE. It’s not a problem for me — yet, to better support my team, I’ve started integrating more modern tools. This article will walk you through the upgraded stack I’ve adopted, showing you how you can build a fully mobile, device-agnostic development environment too.
The Heart of the System: An Ubuntu Server Running Docker
At the core of my development setup is a remote server running Ubuntu, powered by Docker. Over the years, I’ve had different servers, but today I rely on two: one hosted on Digital Ocean and the other in my home network. Neither is particularly powerful; one is an old desktop, and the other is a modest droplet. Yet, their power lies in their scalability. I can resize the Digital Ocean droplet to handle heavy loads and scale it back down without breaking the bank. This flexibility has enabled me to handle massive data crunching affordably.
Enter the New Kid: VS Code Server
For years, I was the lone Vim user on my team — resistant to adopting VS Code despite its popularity. But this year, I gave it a try. And I get it now. VS Code is a robust, feature-packed editor, and the game-changer is that it can run as a web app in the browser. Thanks to Docker images from linuxserver.io, setting up VS Code is a breeze. The best part? It can be customized with all the extensions you’re used to, right in the browser. A simple setup that brings a lot of power to your development workflow.
