Repl.it: online environment for interactively exploring programming languages | Hacker News Reader

Repl.it: online environment for interactively exploring programming languages

repl.it

54 pointsniggler11 comments

We use repl.it as our primary environment during the first half of Intro to JavaScript classes for GirlDevelopIt (http://www.teaching-materials.org/javascript/) It's a great way for students to try out JS in a fast way without worrying about the DOM. I also love that it's got JSHint built-in, as that helps students spot their errors faster.

I've used repl.it before many times, it's come in handy (especially at work) because our machines are locked down. Great way to experiment with implementing a particular req or just fooling around in general.

Find myself using it for Ruby sometimes but really wish it wasn't v1.8.7. Wonder what the reasoning behind that was.

When we built this, ruby 1.8 was the more dominant version.

So, you guys have plans to upgrade when 1.8.7 is deprecated?

When we find the time ;)

Or when someone compiles Ruby 1.9 to JS, I will add it.

On a related note:

rlwrap[1] is not an "online" (ie. browser-based) repl, but it can be quite useful in a shell.

[1] - http://utopia.knoware.nl/~hlub/uck/rlwrap/

I would guess that the languages offered are those that can be converted to Javascript? If so are the others waiting to be added? Or is this the current offering?

Ruby (https://github.com/replit/emscripted-ruby) and python (https://github.com/replit/empythoned) are built using emscripten (https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki)

I would imagine that other languages like C could be brought in if they could be compiled using emscripten. However, people have had problems bringing clang and llvm into emscripten: https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/issues/579

OCaml's repl is converted already to Javascript by using js_of_ocaml, so it should be possible to add it. I just opened a feature request on jsREPL about this.

Great repost indeed. This has been out for couple of years.

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