Hacker News Reader

Comment by cercatrova | Hacker News Reader

I'm disappointed that now you need to sign up on www.repl.it rather than just spinning up a test environment, definitely cuts down on usage. I've found a workaround with www.http://repl.it/languages/python3 for example, but I'm not sure how long this will still be active given their plans to become a full-fledged IDE.

View on HN

We have no plans and I see no reason to make you have to sign up. (Although to cut down on abuse some things aren't available for anonymous users like long-term web hosting).

You can also go to repl.it/languages and see all the langauges.

As for our plans to become an IDE: we've given ourselves the hard task of being a REPL-first IDE and to always load in under 2 seconds. More here: https://repl.it/blog/platform

For the landing page: we've found that most people coming through there go through the signup/login flow anyways so we've emphasized that. You can still get to the languages in the footer.

Congrats on the fundraising and the momentum Amjad!

Thank you!

> we've found that most people coming through there go through the signup/login flow anyways

This baffles me. Why? Don't people just want to mash something into a REPL quickly (step in between: write the first one or two letters of the language you want to use and press enter)? That's certainly how I use it ...

Oh most people will google "repl.it ruby" and get to that directly.

We also just discussed this and we're adding a language selector on the homepage.

You can always use Repl.it as anon, we found out that many people lose their work and forget to create accounts. If you create an account you'll always be logged in and it won't cut down on usage IMO. Happy to hear your thoughts.

I think it has always been like that, if you scroll to the bottom you can click on what environment you want to load. Been like that awhile I think.

Before you got the drop down on the front page that you now see on repl.it/languages. I admit I didn't look too hard at the list of languages that are there now, but just that one change to sign up instead of dive into the repl was a little annoying.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com