IDE? Sure, the whole machine is the development environment. Integrated to the nines, everything you need right there in your pocket.
And frankly, that machine was luxurious!! Multi-line display, reasonably sized keyboard? NICE. The ones I used were typically one or two line displays. Workable, but not pleasant.
Today, yeah. We have very luxurious user interface capabilities! Fantastic displays, sounds, keyboards, touch screens, and lots of storage, can run multiple programs at once.
Back then, the inspiration was simply being able to write and run a program. The bonus with these little pocket computers was being able to do that on the go, where you are.
I was doing manufacturing back when these things popped up. Getting one was huge! I filled one with a bunch of programs that could compute things needed to make parts quickly and accurately.
There were good computers, but they were in offices generally far away from where the action was. A lot of effort went into making sure the people making things had the info they needed to do that too.
But, that didn't always happen with prototypes and or jigs, fixtures and other things needed to make the intended things.
I basically encoded my skills into that little pocket computer and could think something up, or be handed a drawing and just go make stuff from that input data and do so with few worries.
Prior to these kinds of devices, people would use reference sheets, or go to where they could use a computer to generate the detail data they need, or just break out pencil and paper and do the math with some calculator or other.
The ones I used offered BASIC. And for the time, getting some RAM, a respectable BASIC, a screen, etc... meant being able to write programs to solve problems and get the benefit of those solutions multiple times, on demand.
Today, of course, we carry around phones with computers attached and they are crazy powerful! Today we've got apps for people to use too.
At that time, the IDE was the device, a reference card, manual in the carrying case, and if you were lucky, some storage options and or printed output options. Otherwise, it was use the little screen and keyboard to bang the program out, run it, debug it, then use it.
Truth is a couple of Mhz, reasonable RAM and basic I/O can do a whole lot! That is exactly what these little guys did, in addition to being portable, which I wrote a little about above.
Most of the value is still there too. Often we have an app, but we could also have more people writing little programs on their phones.
Lots of resistance to that, and I understand why, but...
This topic got me to thinking about Hypercard for mobile.
Package up all the hard bits, give people a few robust options and a place to input the few lines of code that matter and suddenly we have all the value of those little devices and in a way more powerful form.
It's not clear from the bit of the video I watched, but presumably there was some sort of IDE-like help with this?