You've been able to write and run code on iOS for a very long time. Since the first iPad was released.

Pythonista came out quite a long time ago now, and it's easy enough to write your own script to download and install projects from a git repository or elsewhere. Same for my app, Codea. What Apple has never allowed was an easy way for users to transfer / download / install code onto their device that was built into the app. If the user was willing to write (or copy and paste) someone else's code then Apple were kind of OK with it.

Both Pythonista and Codea have the ability to export Xcode projects for publishing on the store (though regardless of whether they have that feature, you were never prevented from writing and running code on your iPad).

Keep an eye on Pythonista. I expect there'll be an update based on this change soon making it a lot more usable.

http://omz-software.com/pythonista/

It's already really useful. You can create local apps with home-screen icons on it. You can install whatever packages you want (download and run StaSh inside Pythonista to get a command line with pip). You can even use git with it, again through StaSh. For me it's a first-class Python development environment that I can use when away from my main computer.

The only shortcoming today is that you can't get code into it except by grabbing it from a git repo or pasting it in from the clipboard. Today's policy change should directly address that limitation.

There are scripts you can put into Pythonista for pulling files in from Dropbox and a Gist, etc, but if you are working on a multi-file, multi-module app then syncing file by file is just way too painful. The way I do it is to run an FTP server app on the phone/iPad, connect in from my Mac and manually copy the whole directory tree. You can also export and email a zip of a directory. Snapshotting like that is survivable, but proper built-in sync or Git support is the holy grail.

You can already do quasi-pip installs on it., provided you're dealing with pure Python modules.

(I do that by syncing files from my Dropbox via the API, but there are other ways)

I already have an iPad Pro 12". It's seriously capable of being a laptop replacement if the software vendors push real products onto it. (looking at you Adobe Illustrator!)

Anyways, how soon can I expect it to run a native Xcode or Visual Studio IDE editor, with a local Python interpreter running Django on uWSGI and a web server, backed up a Postgres database and Redis caches, with Git?

Is Apple reserving actual development for Macs only?

+1 for Illustrator. Béziers curves are such a match with touchscreens

Also Autodesk Graphic. It's by far the best iOS vector drawing app, despite being a bit buggy in places. Combined with iCloud I can start an illustration on my iPhone, continue on the iPad and then finish off on the Mac.

Shameless plug – this is an ongoing collection of vector doodles I've made using Graphic on the iPhone: https://www.instagram.com/shapeslinescolours/

I haven't used the iOS version, but you should check out Affinity Designer. The Mac version is amazing (better than Illustrator IMO) and I'd have high expectations on iOS. The Mac version is well worth the $50 license.

yes please. Especially for image tracing, coupled with the ability to take photos straight from the device. PLEASE!

For a year or so I've kicked around the idea of building a dev or data science environment based around iPad backed by cloud computation.

That said, I'm pretty sure there's a new sort of "code" based around the iPad's interaction paradigm that is different from a desktop.