amasad

What use-cases are you thinking to use it for?

That's awesome. More the former. Can you email patrick@repl.it?

>1. It would be great if you gave a shell level access to the teacher/paid accounts to manage shared REPLs. When there are 100s of shared URLs to deal with, the UI is very limited to search and find repls.

Like an account wide shell access? That's an interesting idea although not sure about the feasibility since every repl is it's own container.

One thing we've been toying with is a CLI-like tool that let's you manage your account. We can add account-wide grep and things like it there. You can access an early version here: https://repl.it/~/cli

>2. While I understand the need to simplify UI, it is not clear why "Python" REPL comes with a folder view to the left by "Python + PyGames" one doesn't. Similarly shell is only accessible in certain types of REPLs. I understand there some key combination to start shell, but only works some of the time.

This is great feedback and we're already starting to address it. The difference between different environments is annoying. I believe PyGame is the same environment so you might be talking about "Python with Turtle" which currently runs a different environment. We're getting close to addressing all this.

As for the shell it's accessible everywhere now, you can pull it up from the command-bar https://blog.repl.it/commandbar

>3. I had a case of one REPL running an infinite loop - none of us could do anything to terminate it.

That's surprising to hear because we do a lot of work to try to handle infinite loops and make it easy to terminate (try this for example https://repl.it/@amasad/loop-test). Do you remember exact steps or do you have a link to debug? You can always email me with bugs or feedback: amjad@repl.it

>4. Once we wrote some code that generated a file. It took us several refresh/logout sequences to make it visible in the file manager - clear support for such use-cases would be helpful.

It's actually quite common use-case to generate files and while incredibly tricky to make it work well I believe we've recently became better at this. Can you give it another shot? Again please email me with the repl if it doesn't work.

Thanks so much, feedback like this is always valuable. You'd be happy to know that a company-wide priority right now is quality, bugs, and reliability. By early next year we'll be much more polished.

That's awesome! We've been working with some teachers to develop free curriculum, if you're interested doing something with data would love to chat (we have budget for this).

https://docs.repl.it/curriculum/Intro

That's exactly how we use it internally at Repl.it and honestly it's almost like an organizational superpower. We can for example deploy a slack bot to help with deployment in minutes instead of days, and it's all collaborative. Working on internal tools resembles more gardening than building at this point -- constant improvement and evolution.

If you care to chat about this use-case and help us learn more please email me amjad@repl.it

Repl.it (YC W18) | Frontend, Fullstack, Programming Language Hackers | SF or REMOTE | https://repl.it/jobs

Repl.it is the first massively open collaborative computing platform where anyone, even without even needing an account, can hop on and in seconds start coding, building, and hosting apps and websites.

Apply if you like working on challenging and impactful problems. Running a service like this is hard to operate, scale, and secure. Also, supporting the number of languages we do (https://repl.it/languages) is a hard tooling problem -- we have to build generic protocols for all IDE actions like executing, debugging, authoring, running tests, writing files, etc. Finally, it's an incredibly challenging frontend/design problem to build a fast collaborative in-browser IDE that's both powerful and simple.

It's a great time to be joining us, we're still 15 full-time people, we reach millions of coders a month, and we're backed by YC and a16z.

Very cool. Runs on repl.it nicely: https://repl.it/@amasad/terminal-present

It's all actually git. And you can start a local repo without calli g to GitHub. You can just use it in half the time it takes to have this discussion.

No you don't have to. Build a web experience or GUI. Repl.it supports both environments.

We're doing team matching on our discord repl.it/discord

We have some experiments not so much in changing textual representation but more in visual tools to make use of said high res monitors. Nothing concrete to share publicly yet.

I also wrote recently about how GPT-3 being so good with little training at code generation might make for interesting advancement in programming environments: https://blog.repl.it/codingai

Yes, interns apply and we do hire them (despite not listing any intern-specific roles).

Repl.it is set of automation and UI tools that makes it easy for beginners learn to code and for developers to test or prototype projects.

Any feature that's implemented in the UI is implemented as abstraction over things you can do by opening the shell. Because we are a small team that prizes simplicity over completeness, and because GH is the most popular we just made that the default.

But you can open the shell (command/cntrl+k and type "shell") then use git to your hearts desire :)

We'll probably add native GitLab or whatever others want in the future. You can always leave feedback here and tell us what you want: https://repl.it/feedback

Probably in the next few months. Remote is working well and we'll probably do more timezones before the end of the year.

> Repl.it is an amazing idea, but it's infuriating to use. No syntax highlighting in the REPL, laaaaaag everywhere, hardly any version control… It's useful for performing a 30 second Python interaction on machines without Python installed, but that 30 seconds becomes 3 minutes because Repl.it is so clunky.

We've improved performance a lot and we'll keep working on it. I just timed it and it took me 5 seconds to start a new Python repl and execute code :)

> I tried to log in to check whether things had improved, but apparently I need Google's permission to do so now? And, in fact, nothing will run without allowing Google's JavaScript, even once I've logged in.

What do you mean by this? You can log-in via Google but that's about it.

> That being said, I think the world is better with Repl.it in it. It's not like these other things I criticise where I think we're better off without them; Repl.it's flaws are infuriating because they're stopping me from appreciating something potentially great.

Thanks we're always happy to hear feedback, negative more important than positive. I'd invite you or anyone who loves Repl.it but find it to be lacking to apply to work with us https://repl.it/jobs

I agree they should be there. We've been more focused more on vertical feature work than horizontal. But we're hiring a language hacker if anyone wants to help us get more language and tooling support https://repl.it/@util/jerbs#open-positions/language_hacker.t...

We make all of our money from the education market through our classroom products and believe me teachers don't need more languages to teach nor in a hundred years will they teach a hobbyist language.

So I invite you to provide a compelling case for how this is a call for free labour.

We started work on it but ran into some issues. It's there but hidden. If someone is an OCaml expert consider contributing to our interpreter interface Prybar.

- https://repl.it/l/ocaml

- https://github.com/replit/prybar

We're also hiring someone to work on languages at Repl.it: https://repl.it/@util/jerbs#open-positions/language_hacker.t...

This is cool! Excited to try it.

Although the API is already pretty experimentation and REPL-friendly. I recorded a video here of the development experience: https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1286813984159444992

I wrote about something related as well: Disintegrated Development Environments — How Did We Get Here?

https://amasad.me/disintegrated

:)

Thanks!

Yeah would love to explore it! We already have one intern taking a gap year and doing a great job so we're definitely open to it.

Apply!

Repl.it (YC W18) | Frontend, fullstack, mobile, backend, designers | SF or Remote (US) | https://repl.it/jobs

Repl.it is the first massively open collaborative computing platform where anyone, even without even needing an account, can hop on and in seconds start coding, building, and hosting apps and websites.

Apply if you like working on challenging problems, because running a service like this is hard to operate, scale, and secure. Also, supporting the number of languages we do (https://repl.it/languages) is a hard tooling problem -- we have to build generic protocols for all IDE actions like executing, debugging, authoring, running tests, writing files, etc. Finally, it's an incredibly challenging frontend/design problem to build a fast collaborative in-browser IDE that's both powerful and simple.

It's a great time to be joining us, we're still 12 full-time people, we reach millions of coders a month, and we're backed by YC and a16z.

I wonder if you get enough of it on a highly carnivorous diet -- bone broth, bone marrow etc.

Hi! What's not working with rustlings and repl.it? Feel free to email me amjad@repl.it

No. I'll add this to the FAQ.

Looks like it's resolved -- we're coming back up at Repl.it.

I'm surprised the author didn't complete the analogy -- if Bitcoin and ham radio are both "clunky and old-fangled," what was the internet at its inception?

The internet didn't start in "1991" it started in 1966 with ARPANET and it was so hard and expensive to use it would make using Bitcoin feel like using a toy.

The tone of this article gives me Krugman-on-internet vibes: "By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s"

Game theory / Moloch should've never let open-source software happen. While not perfect it works surprisingly well despite potentially suffering from all the same coordination problems outlined in this essay: free rider problem, tragedy of the commons, and all sorts of game theory race-to-the-bottom scenarios.

I also notice random acts of kindness from people, spontaneous corporation amongst rivaling tribes or companies, and things a strict self-interested agent-based analysis will tell us it's not possible.

It's an insightful model of the world but it's too simplistic and pessimistic.