For me personally to do any type of development, I either need a constant network connection or the ability to run my stack locally including databases and Redis.

I also need to be able to launch a web browser or Postman to debug interactively. I personally hate developing on a laptop with no external monitors (preferably two). I would definitely hate trying to do that with iOS’s simplistic multi app/multi window support.

Also, while the Files app is okay for one off documents and sharing between apps. How would that work in a development scenario?

You would also need to allow apps to communicate with each other over TCP/IP locally.

Now you’re back to a multi window GUI (making iOS more complex) and apps having random access to the file system (less secure).

If you want an iPad to behave like a laptop - why not just buy a laptop? Alternatively, if you want a laptop with the power of MacOS and the power/performance capabilities of ARM, wouldn’t it make more sense for Apple to port MacOS and create ARM laptops?

The iPad is so light, I have no trouble throwing one in my laptop bag along with my laptop and syncing files between apps on both using cloud storage.