nbashaw

Great point! I totally agree

I agree - I'm just saying it's the best starting point, not that it encapsulates all "coding".

I kind of feel bad that the switch from "learn to code" to "why schools work" was so jarring. I definitely need to do a better job making it a bit more skim-able. But I definitely don't feel bad about advising people to start learning to code by learning HTML and CSS if their goal is to eventually learn to build web-apps.

It certainly is coding in the most literal sense of writing code to be interpreted by a computer, although it's not a programming language. You are correct about that. Nevertheless, it's a great starting place for beginners.

You definitely can get paid for building static websites. Somehow I did.

Totally! It also taught me what it feels like to actually work hard. Before that I had only worked at a pretty leisurely pace, but in debate if you want to win the amount of research and practice required are crazy.

That old Airbnb hacker house link is broken, but holy crap the background of their 404 page is awesome!

In college, before I became obsessed with startups, I was a policy debater at Michigan State. Any other ex-debaters hanging around on HN?

Sorry for submitting to HN with it not quite ready! Just stumbled across it today and thought it was really fascinating. I'm working on a "learn to code" product myself. Just watched your talk at Oredev in Sweden yesterday. Thank you so much for sharing what you're learning!

Is this a joke? I seriously can't tell

Actually more than 100 million. That's just the amount they raised from a16z

We used firebase to power Scratchpad.io's back end (launched yesterday) and it was an awesome experience! The security features were super easy to use

Thanks so much, Scott! That is indeed an ace default, but I can try and figure out how to override it. Syntax completion is always tricky.

It's definitely a possibility! Actually, more like a probability. Just didn't want to build too much into V1

I could definitely make a drag-to-resize thing, but I opted against it in V1 for simplicity's sake. We do have a fullscreen mode though

Whoa! Thanks for sending this in! Crazy bug.

Haha thanks so much!! That is awesome

I just realized that after HNing it :( Terrible oversight. However, the tooltip when you hover over the arrow button is OS-appropriate https://gist.github.com/4321208#file-scratchpad-js-L344

I wanted to reduce this:

1. Create a file 2. Open it in your text editor 3. Edit code 4. Switch to browser 5. Open up the file 6. Switch back to editor 7. Edit code 8. Hit save 9. Switch back to browser 10. Hit refresh 11. GOTO 6

to this:

1. Go to http://scratchpad.io 2. Write code

Thanks!! I really appreciate that. I also like the unique URL feature :)

Haha this is very true. I like to think of it as an easter egg.

Crazy! I thought I encountered this once in development but couldn't repro it again. Thought I was going crazy. Thank you so much!!

Thanks! I'll have to read up on OT. Our backend is totally hosted by Firebase, other than a simple Sinatra app that generates the unique IDs.

When you say synchronizing cursors, do you mean having multiple cursors (google docs style) or having a single cursor be in the same position for all clients? We are doing the latter, and I wasn't aware it was possible to do the former with ace but I would love to do it if I can

I believe that's it but I'm not sure. I've emailed the firebase founder and he might be able to chime in here

Basically on keyup I ship the whole contents of the editor and the cursor position to firebase. I'm also keeping track of all the active connections to a scratchpad document so I know who is typing. Anytime the code changes on the server, it triggers a callback function on each client that will update the contents of the textarea. If someone else is typing, the document is locked so only 1 person can type at a time. This way I can avoid all the potential merge conflicting type things that can happen.

I'm not sure what an OT engine is. What is that?

Thanks! All it took was the lovely tomorrow_night_eighties.css theme :)

Thanks! It was actually really simple to make with two tools: http://ace.ajax.org and http://www.firebase.com

If you want to chat about building it I'd love to give you any tips - i'm nbashaw@gmail.com

Ah good call! It's control + i in mac

Thanks!! Glad you enjoy it

Just FYI, the images look terribly stretched on my iPhone

At the bottom of the spam post it says if you delete the post it will delete your Tumblr account. Since this spreads by people viewing it, it's probably important to point out that deleting the posts will not delete your tumblr account, and you should do it immediately so people viewing your blog don't get infected themselves.

From the article:

"The four-year test at Norway’s government owned Halden reactor could help thorium inch closer to replacing uranium as a possible safer and more effective nuclear power source. Many people believe that thorium is superior because it leaves less long- lived dangerous waste, makes it far more difficult to fashion bombs, runs more efficiently, and can be made meltdown proof."