Replit Mobile App

https://blog.replit.com/mobile-app

by todsacerdoti • 4 years ago

372 207 4 years ago

blog.replit.com

cantaloupe• 4 years ago

Wow! I haven’t used it yet, but I’m impressed by the demos. Seems like just the mobile editor with joystick and autocompletion would be a viable product by itself, not to mention the power of repl.it behind it.

kasajian3• 4 years ago

Very little innovation is done in the area of coding on a small-form mobile device. Early attempts are needed in order to get feedback and learn from experience what works and what doesn't.

It's nice to see repl.it is at least attempting to address this "market". Their previous mobile app was so bad I uninstalled it and used the web site directly instead. Hopefully this works better.

kasajian3• 4 years ago

Still doesn't work.

1. Already have an account 2. Continue with Github 3. Blank white screen and just stays there.

I think I'll wait.

jessenichols• 4 years ago

Repit support here: dm'd you on twitter to figure this out.

swyx2• 4 years ago

i had 1 and 2 same as you, didn't get 3. just worked as expected.

you may just be unlucky.

stblack• 4 years ago

Presently on iOS it appears this is an iPhone app that doesn't scale to iPad screen dimensions, even when expanded. It's using between a third and a half of the available viewport in landscape orientation.

That said, it appears to work pretty well in side-by-side mode, concurrently with another app, but it still uses about half the available viewport in this mode.

I expect this will get addressed PDQ.

brundolf• 4 years ago

Came here to ask about this. Using it on a phone seems great for learning, toy projects, and maybe quick fixes, but I think you need more space to do sustained development. Having this on an iPad with a keyboard would be exciting.

CamCrain• 4 years ago

I think their main focus is allowing people to code who only have a mobile phone, so my guess is iPad is a lower priority (because most people with iPads have full size computers they can use instead).

wilsonnb3• 4 years ago

iPad users also have access to the desktop version of their site

Jtsummers4• 4 years ago

Making it scale properly to iPad screen sizes and doing nothing else shouldn't be too hard to do and would make it a lot more useful for people. Even if they don't want to spend the time developing an iPad specific layout, no reason not to use the full iPad screen with the current layout.

CompuIves• 4 years ago

It might be interesting to try out the CodeSandbox app: https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/codesandbox/id1423330822?l=e.

It's the same concept, you get a VM you can work on from a native app, but our app is for iOS only and supports iPads natively.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders of CodeSandbox.

abxytg• 4 years ago

I love it. The next app that eats our lunch is going to be written by some kid on a school bus. That is killer.

pbiggar2• 4 years ago

Very very cool. Have been thinking about this for Darklang for a while. One thing that's changed since I started thinking about it is how big a deal AI assist is.

Originally, I thought a structured editor would be essential, but now while it's helpful, I think AI assist can do like 90% the benefit you get.

asadlionpk2• 4 years ago

is darklang going anywhere? It's a good tech demo but is there a product market fit yet?

pbiggar2• 4 years ago

Lol, thanks for asking! Yeah, I think we're making progress. There's a lot to do, and I feel it is getting done (see progress at https://darklang.com/changelog).

I don't believe we have product market fit yet, the plan goes like this:

- rebuild the technical foundations (DONE)

- fix a lot of the jankiness in the editor <- we are here now

- make sure language is fully baked (coming soon)

- add a package manager/user management

I think the last step is where we'll start to see some product market fit.

petercooper• 4 years ago

For some reason the video in the post refuses to load for me, but it's also at https://twitter.com/Replit/status/1582750139621380096 - it's not for me, but it's a compelling pitch and I wish them every success. I'm a Replit user simply to use it as a clean testbed for various experiments and the value I get for $7/mo is very good.

sirjaz• 4 years ago

Is there any hope for a native desktop app?

kasajian3• 4 years ago

I'm all for native desktop apps, but do you have a particular reason for this over what you can do through the web-browser? It works very well as is, and if it were to run as a desktop app, it would basically do what the web version does but in a desktop form-factor. Which I suspect is not what you want, but you want some features that are missing in the web app, right? if so, what are those?

ja3k2• 4 years ago

I've been programming on my phone with termux + vim. It's been sort of a delight.

barbazoo5• 4 years ago

The thought of using vim on a phone gives me mild anxiety but I'll definitely check termux!

thesuperbigfrog2• 4 years ago

> The thought of using vim on a phone gives me mild anxiety but I'll definitely check termux!

termux also has emacs, nano, and a few other text editors.

ja3k2• 4 years ago

I've found the phone's small keyboard makes a lot of the silly vim shortcuts I've learned over time actually worth it.

mrlemke• 4 years ago

It works quite well. There is a lack of precision trying to drag the cursor around on Android, which is made worse on the <$100 quality devices. Using vim's keyboard commands, I can precisely edit text far easier than anything else I have used on a phone. I never used emacs because I'm not a fan of chords, and this is amplified on the phone. However, people who swipe text may like emacs chords over vim's commands and modes.

thesuperbigfrog2• 4 years ago

> I've been programming on my phone with termux + vim. It's been sort of a delight.

Seconded.

With Termux (https://termux.dev/en/) I have C, C++, Rust, Go, Perl, Python, Ruby, and more in my pocket.

The screen is small, but the tools are mostly the same you would find on your favorite *nix box.

No network connection needed beyond getting the packages you want installed.

yewenjie• 4 years ago

In case you want the same Termux experience but also the huge nix packages collection - check out https://github.com/t184256/nix-on-droid

gmaster14403• 4 years ago

This is one of those examples for me where the idea is far superior than the implementation. The idea of anyone being able to quickly write code from anywhere, as the main promo video suggests, is fantastic and greatly motivating. In practice, coding on an iPhone (even with an innovative new joystick), is gimmicky at best, given how deeply ingrained good ergonomics are in the coding process.

I struggle to see this as one of those "bicycle for the mind" products, hope I'm wrong!

neb_b• 4 years ago

This is mostly aimed at people who don't have the luxury of coding from a computer.

See this tweet from the CEO: https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1582754947480793093

We partnered with @TeamMindjoy to test the app by teaching girls how to code in a South African township and we made a video about it. During this time the wifi was super unstable and the few laptops they had were unusable, but kids continued to code on $100 Android phones!

amasad• 4 years ago

Yes we have stories from all over the world where people are using mobile to build real things. There is a kid in Egypt, for example, that built discord bots for a living on his phone.

Additionally there are also lots of cases were fairly well off folks with access to desktop computers and wifi that find themselves with a phone and want to prototype an idea or make a quick change to a project. I’ve been using it and I find it relaxing to lay back on the couch and do some fun coding. Especially with Ghostwriter (our Copilot-like thing: https://blog.replit.com/ai) it’s super usable. I built large part of my toy Lisp in Python in the app while in the park, waiting at the doctor’s office, or simply relaxing after a long day: https://replit.com/@amasad/Lisp-in-Python

barbazoo5• 4 years ago

During this time the wifi was super unstable

Unless I'm doing something wrong it seem that you still have to be online to create and run code.

ignoramous• 4 years ago

For folks in the global south who might own a smartphone but not a macbook, a native mobile dev env is god-sent. For others, the Replit mobile app is but a start, even if it looks like a toy, and can help in building only toy apps, and deal only with toy codebases. This is a start in the right direction.

Besides, in the future, more advances in AI might mean, folks only need to key in prompts.

ebiester• 4 years ago

This may be an example of skating to where the puck is at.

Consider that the new iPad has the same power as a desktop and can be used with a desktop monitor. (This is the $450 version.) You can also connect an iPhone to a display to an HDMI monitor, but they haven't done the work to have a desktop mode yet. Android desktop mode but they haven't been . If iphone cracks it, android will have to catch up.

Phones have the power today and they have the storage today. It's just missing the work and make an external keyboard and storage display a first class experience.

And the moment you can can add a $100 monitor, a $15 cable, and a $40 bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo, you are at a developer machine for about $150 over their phone that they have anyway.

lupire2• 4 years ago

What do you call a phone with a big external keyboard and display?

A developer machine like that is already $150, called a Chromebook or a Raspberry Pi.

saagarjha3• 4 years ago

I work on iSH, which is in a similar product area. The thing is that by all intents and purposes the environment we give you is terrible: you have a software keyboard, and navigating around and typing is pretty bad. But we have plenty of users who love it and use it really heavily. Why? A lot are children who have phones but can’t always access a computer. Some people want to code on the go. They’re really doing it out of necessity when they don’t have another device, not because the experience we provide is good. There’s definitely room for improvement but I doubt using a phone will ever be as pleasant as using a computer. And that’s fine.

abdellah123• 4 years ago

Very cool and exciting Kudos

A very annoying bug is that the first chatacter is a capital letter in mobile. And parentheses are not suggested along with brackets and curly braces.

mradek• 4 years ago

On a related note, it would be cool if there was a "coding mode" mobile keyboard option. We have built-in keyboards for phone number and formatters for particular things.

It would be cool to have a built-in coding keyboard that adapts to the language being written via plugins, etc.

evan_• 4 years ago

definitely would be nice to have but also don't forget that you can connect any bluetooth keyboard to an iPhone.

emdashcomma• 4 years ago

I agree. A great start would even be to do something like what iSH does, where you have buttons for tab, control, escape, and a similar joystick for the arrow keys. As of now, I can't issue a tab in the shell, for example.

d0mine• 4 years ago

There are such things e.g., Pythonista 3rd party keyboard on iOS (android is even more likely to support custom keyboards).

swyx2• 4 years ago

i would kill for browser devtools in mobile safari. so many things i want to edit oneoff

jlokier• 4 years ago

On Android the Hacker's Keyboard does a respectable job for coding and command line. I use it on those rare occasions I need to use SSH from my Android phone.

It doesn't adapt to the language being written, that's an interesting idea.

rchiniquy• 4 years ago

Love to see this on the Steam Deck.

asadlionpk2• 4 years ago

That would be a downgrade. SteamDeck already has a linux desktop and chrome browser. Can always pin replit.com website to steamOS homescreen.

alexashka• 4 years ago

Isn't this entire problem addressed by having an 11" laptop?

I struggle to see what this is good for, besides solving LeetCode and/or other small, isolated, well defined puzzles on a small screen.

barbazoo5• 4 years ago

Not everyone has a laptop is the point I think.

tpmx• 4 years ago

I think they'll make more money from relatively affluent people than from people that can't really afford access to a proper screen/keyboard with superior ergonomics.

xnx2• 4 years ago

I'm bullish on this because mobile (and web) development is ridiculously overcomplicated to a beginner. I think it's a common misconception that coding/logic is difficult. I find the development setup and deployment to be much more complicated. As evidence, take a look at the impressive workarounds that citizen developers use to make things work in an easy environment like Excel.

A keyboard and mouse probably solve most of the complaints in this thread.

ramenator• 4 years ago

I think the idea here is to enable people in places of the world that may not have laptops, where mobile phones are people's only computer. That's how I'm looking at this, but that's just my guess.

dumpHero2• 4 years ago

Think people with chromebooks or old laptops who cannot use it for development. Or restricted laptops loaned from school which do not allow anyone but admin access to install anything.

xnx2• 4 years ago

I agree. I think it's great. I was trying to point out that most(?) Android and iOS devices allow you to connect any cheap USB or Bluetooth keyboard.

duped• 4 years ago

I find the development setup and deployment to be much more complicated

My understanding is that is the problem repl.it is trying to solve. In a sentence: think about your code and not your environment.

My curmudgeonly self thinks that there are deeper problems and externalities that programming on a phone/tablet or in the web only exasperate. Computer literacy is shockingly poor among the incoming generation of people who have only used mobile devices, WebUIs, and maybe a Chromebook - and that's not the fault of people or technology, but the business models that only succeed by locking users into platforms and hiding details of how those platforms work. The issue with programming on mobile or through something like repl.it is that it hides too much - at the end of the day, tinkering with computers requires computers that can be tinkered with and software systems that can be introspected.

Terretta• 4 years ago

The issue with programming on mobile or through something like repl.it is that it hides too much

VT100 and IBM360, you didn't have to be in the mainframe room to learn to code.

marqueewinq• 4 years ago

I believe there are enormous amounts of resources which enable people to self-tech the basics of coding. I partially agree -- but it's not an absense of possibility, it's absense of motivation. I think it's exactly because modern systems are opaque to a beginner

epolanski2• 4 years ago

And how is repl.it different here compared to GitHub codespaces, codepens, codesandbox and many others?

bidirectional• 4 years ago

Are any of those workable on a phone?

jrm4• 4 years ago

I suppose I'm "bearish" on selling development as it presently exists for the exact same reason?

Right now, what's being sold is "more people can go into the career of programming" as opposed to "no really, it's possible to bring so-called 'programming' to everyone.'"

Put differently, it wasn't that Hypercard didn't catch on, it's that things like Hypercard get "killed."

015a• 4 years ago

I'm, generally, not bullish: But only because the predominating "what value do products like this bring" arguments from those who are bullish is some variation of "it's great for learning/beginners". That's simply no way to build a venture business (and replit has received... $105M).

Higher layers of abstraction can make sense; no code tools can be killer; but that isn't really replit. Replit is just a weird product on the side of the abstraction spectrum which requires its devs to understand a large chunk of what would be required to get, say, a nodejs server running on, say, Heroku.

svnpenn• 4 years ago

Note Heroku isn't free anymore. I know you didn't say it was, but it's worth mentioning.

zoomzoom• 4 years ago

Understanding the moving parts well enough is one thing. Being responsible for writing and maintaining all the layers of configuration and glue it takes to properly operate web apps in the cloud is another. There's room for abstractions short of no-code that remove this burden, IMO, and not just for beginners or learning.

AndrewKemendo2• 4 years ago

Replit isn't for building HA/mutli-tenant stateless, web applications with hot-hot failover, data redundancy, perfect docs and APIs

It's for people who want to learn how to code or want to prototype something absolutely as quickly as possible with the minimal amount of tooling and experience.

edmundsauto• 4 years ago

Just my take, but the more people who can “code”, even at a basic level, the better. Because then they intuit that the challenging part in not the words but the logic.

Learn to code then be an “excel jockey”. Those folks create just as much value with less of the identity bullshit.

Edit - sorry if this sounded confrontational. That wasn’t my intent - I just learned that I feel passionately about this topic.

AndrewKemendo2• 4 years ago

I find the development setup and deployment to be much more complicated

Fully agree with this.

To the extent where I wish there was an "environment service" wherein I simply specify the desired packages and tools I want via GUI (No JSON or Terraform or anything other than radio buttons and drop downs) - and I get a spooled up VM with all the dependencies and paths perfectly built in with no jank package clashes or deprecated packages that need patching.

arjvik• 4 years ago

So a GUI for Nix?

lacker• 4 years ago

I'm bullish on this because my children prefer phones and iPads for almost everything that I would prefer a computer for. They have ten times more experience with computing devices than I did when I was their age, and almost all of that experience is via touch screens. Keyboard and mouse are unnatural for them, but when it comes to navigating mobile UIs, they are perhaps already faster and more fluent than I am.

hiidrew• 4 years ago

This is it for me. My background is in design so I'm a novice when it comes to any development. But setting things up via command line confuses me to hell.

Jyaif• 4 years ago

I originally thought that programming on phones was ridiculous, but then I remembered that I did a great deal of programming on TI calculators when I was a kid.

naillo2• 4 years ago

Replit recently raised a bunch of money and have really raised their advertising focus enormously. I'm seeing so much hype from them but so underwhelming actual value provided.

Kiro• 4 years ago

What? This is awesome.

naillo2• 4 years ago

You really think so? Stuff like this has existed for a while you tired real quick of doing anything significant on your phone (having tried a few before).

csmeyer• 4 years ago

I think it's great that they've identified cursor placement as one of the trickier aspects of coding on a phone. The joystick is a great idea, I found it a bit hard to use at first (kind of flies around the screen) but the little buttons are good for getting your cursor inside a string literal, for example.

I'm excited to get my students trying this, many of them only have a school issued iPad. I'm also curious about how well the autocomplete can be tuned. I think right now suggestions are a bit rough, I'm hopeful they'll start using language server suggestions soon. (Something like System.out.println, you should definitely get out as an option after System.)

Firmwarrior• 4 years ago

How's it compare to the "space bar trick" on iOS? That thing usually seems to work to let me position the cursor how I want

Jtsummers4• 4 years ago

Just tried it, you can use both within the text editor. I prefer the spacebar "trick". It was much smoother, I had trouble stopping at lines in the middle because it seemed too sensitive for up/down movement. The spacebar long press let me position the cursor anywhere within the text on the screen.

tobr• 4 years ago

The joystick feels like a worse and redundant version of iOS’s built in spacebar-as-trackpad feature, but having buttons to step left and right is useful.

DeathArrow• 4 years ago

I would like to code on a smartwatch, please. And on the dishwasher lcd.

barbazoo5• 4 years ago

It would be really cool if this worked offline but I get how hard that is to do.

r3trohack3r• 4 years ago

Excited to see more mobile first development experiences.

I didn’t think I’d use them, but Autocode’s WebUI works on mobile and I’ve found myself tweaking app logic from my couch for a Halo integration.

For more in-depth focused work, I prefer a keyboard and mouse. But fixing a quick edge case I missed? It’s super handy to be able to tweak a few lines of code with the device in my pocket.

netfortius• 4 years ago

Five times attempting to create an account by using a Google account, on Android phone, five times phone receiving request for approval, five times approving the request, five times bouncing back to the app on the "create an account" state.

msoad• 4 years ago

Thinking of all the kids in lower income situations that only have an Android phone as their only computing device and how Replit will make it possible for them to discover their talent and passion for programming makes me so happy!

Imagine learning how to code well enough, get paid for it to buy your first computer!

Great work!

keeptrying• 4 years ago

That joystick control struck me as a great idea.

This really opens up coding to people who only have a phone - which is a large number of people in say Rural India.

One way of working I've constantly thinking about is using replit's as the unit of work.

Imagine finishing your work and sending the replit to someone else to review, run and then push to beta. No need for any setup on the reciever side or the QA side. If PM specs are also part of this environment, its very self contained and would be a great way for remote teams to work and helps avoid meetings.

gmaster14403• 4 years ago

I’m seeing a lot of responses clarifying that this app is designed for folks who either can’t afford to code from a computer (for various reasons outside of their control) or want to quickly prototype ideas or make changes to existing projects. To better illustrate my skepticism (and bias), I’d like to invoke an imperfect analogy to writing novels.

Imagine a mobile notes app that touts an impressive list of features and ergonomics that allows anyone to write the next novel from anywhere. You no longer need a computer or even an internet connection, just the $100 phone in your pocket and the desire to put words on (digital) paper. It’ll even figure out what you’re writing about and suggest novel plot devices and character arcs to add to your work in progress.

This sounds great on the surface, and it will definitely encourage more people to feel comfortable writing more often, which will no doubt lead to more literature being written as a result, much of which will benefit from the creative AI-injected prose.

The main issue as I see it (and I realize the analogy to writing novels is imperfect), is that the environment in which you’re writing, navigating, executing, and debugging code contributes greatly to one’s productivity and the quality of the final product. I can see the argument for being more of a playground for toy projects and ideas (much like a note-taking app), but I struggle to see this taking over as the primary tool by which technology companies are built.

haolez• 4 years ago

The only issue that I see is that it's a proprietary solution that no one knows where it's going to be in the future.

I'm not trying to be harsh on Replit. They are just starting, after all, and my point above can be addressed in due time if they feel like doing so.

Jtsummers4• 4 years ago

The languages are all bog standard and you can configure the environment for execution via Nix. Not on the mobile (or I've missed it) but via the website you can connect projects to git repos. So none of the data is locked in in any way.

In principle, this means you should be able to clone any project and run it on your own machine(s) with little effort if you're aware of how to set up nix and git in the first place.

runevault2• 4 years ago

At least one novel I'm aware of that was traditionally published was written on a phone, I think a Blackberry, mostly during commutes.

https://bgr.com/general/the-novel-on-the-f-train-an-intervie...

gmaster14403• 4 years ago

For sure, hence an imperfect analogy, and I have no doubt some cool projects will come out of this replit mobile app too. I just don’t see it becoming the weapon of choice for most production development environments.

joshxyz3• 4 years ago

never as the primary tool of course, but it's great for starters.

orliesaurus• 4 years ago

This app makes sense when:

- You're just solving "seriousplay" i.e. code challenges

- Most of the code is boilerplate and you can inject a couple of variables here and there and press a button to deploy

- Quickly fix something that can be done on the fly while you're sitting in the underground (typos, small PRs)

- Any future where AI takes over and starts suggesting the code you want to write and literally takes your hand and guides you, so you write better code faster.

sva_• 4 years ago

fungiblecog• 4 years ago

This looks awesome… installs app on iPad… oh it doesn’t support the full screen. Useless.

boberoni• 4 years ago

I read on another comment by a high school teacher that many of their students write essays on mobile. It seems that the younger generations are mobile-digital native, as opposed to desktop-digital native.

I don't expect desktop apps to be completely replaced by mobile apps, but the migration of some specific use cases is interesting to watch:

- Maps and navigation

- Email / instant messaging

- Photo editing

- Video editing

- Online shopping

- Banking and accounting

- and now, coding

yieldcrv• 4 years ago

I recently read that many young people only use email for some professional communication

And its chat for everything else, including professional things, which also matches my experience lately I just didn't think about it

So then I started messaging young recruiters over chat apps and they are much more receptive than following up over linkedin/email

troupe• 4 years ago

Is it because they are "mobile-digital native" or is it because what they are being asked to write is closer to texting than a normal high school level English paper? I've seen what community college teachers are having kids submit for papers. While they do definitely look like they could have been written on a phone, it isn't because they have some type of skill in writing on mobile.

Sirened• 4 years ago

Most of the paper-writing-on-phones that I've seen is just a convenience thing. Google Docs/other cloud writing platforms make your documents available everywhere, and it turns out that there's a lot of down time where you can cram in some writing time if you're able to easily just pull it up on your phone. I remember writing papers on my phone in high school while on/waiting waiting for the bus. If you live near a college campus, you'll see a lot of students watching lectures, doing flash cards, and writing papers on public transit if you look close enough :)

sneak4• 4 years ago

I think the idea of the quality of text written being related to the screen size of the device on which it was input is an old person anachronism.

This would be like saying novel quality written in a word processor would be inferior to typing on a typewriter, or handwritten.

I write and edit almost all my HN comments on a phone, and I think they’re identical in quality and tone to what I’d write on a computer.

easrng2• 4 years ago

High school student here. idk if coding on mobile will take off in its current form. The tooling works, but it doesn't work well. I can (and have) writen things in the editor on Glitch[1] or in Termux on my phone, but the reduced typing speed for code (you can't rely on autocorrect like with normal text) and the lack of a proper web inspector (I use eruda[2] which is fine but missing features compared to the devtools on desktop browsers) make it frustrating to do larger projects.

[1] https://glitch.com

[2] https://eruda.liriliri.io/

ndneighbor• 4 years ago

It's honestly impressive the amount of coding that young people do from their phones. There is a very healthy healthy community of those who have some solid environments on their (mostly Android) devices. Whats funny is that this was the dream of the One Laptop per Child non-profit that was solved by the flush of ARM devices instead of donor dollars (ftw free market!)

I work at Railway and a lot of our younger, international users use Railway from their phones (usually in class) and it's quite impressive. Honestly, such a fan of Repl.it its why I am a customer of their service and this is a step in the right direction for the dream of the universal runtime.

joshxyz3• 4 years ago

still the best time to be alive. it's crazy i can ssh to my servers using my phones these days.

samsquire• 4 years ago

I use Repl.it web interface for programming on the sofa from my Android phone. There's various bugs in the editor but it works well enough.

I currently subscribe to repl.it. the freedom to quickly create a Java or Python project is really easy and helps me work on problems where I want to write a small amount of code that is at the idea stage.

javier1234543212• 4 years ago

I mean, I think this is just the start. If I am able to create entire environments all cloud based, I can then just use an ipad when I'm travelling. Ok, not ideal for everything, but this is a use case that I've been waiting for a while and it's just not quite there yet. Eventually I can see there's people that will get to employable levels of coding proficiency without understanding the underlying complexities of environments, and the hardware which is running your code. This is problematic in some sense, but an incredible abstraction which can increase productivity in the other hand. Overall, I see this as an amazing positive.

bogota• 4 years ago

People have already got to that level without understanding the environment and hardware. I have worked with them and spent a lot of time explaining how the system works.

I personally don’t understand how people enjoy programming without understanding the stack they are ontop of but im sure some C and assembly programmers said the same thing about most of us today.

javier1234543212• 4 years ago

This is a necessary part of creating more sophisticated systems. Abstracting the lower ends of complexity to focus on the higher ends. The problem is, of course, when the abstractions leak and you need to debug a level lower than you're used to dealing. Still, I think that this is the best discussion on the matter [law of leaky abstractions](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-a...). In the end, yes, it's best to understand everything all the way down to the thermodynamic processes that enable something to be produced, but you cut your losses at some point in order to get started. A leaky abstraction is when you are forced to learn, and how you discover that some of your assumptions are mistaken.

babl-yc• 4 years ago

Did anyone else learn to code on a TI-83+?

Although I doubt I'd use this in a professional setting, making coding accessible to more people sounds great to me.

Jtsummers4• 4 years ago

Tandy 1000, parents sold it. Then TI-85 until a student I was tutoring stole it. Then a TI-86 and HP-48G, plus a high school CS class that used True BASIC on some kind of Macintosh, and by that point C++ and others on my PC at home.

But a lot of time in chemistry and on the school bus rides was spent programming on my calculators.

victor90002• 4 years ago

Yep, TI-81 here

romeoblade• 4 years ago

I ended up with a TI-86 as the cheaper ones were sold out at the time of the school supply rush.

It's the only reason I passed my math classes in high school. Luckily I kept my mouth shut so the teachers didn't know. Eventually they implemented a factory reset procedure on test day.

You would bring up the reset menu and the teacher would walk around and initiate it and confirm it.

LelouBil• 4 years ago

Today (at least in France) programmable calculators have an Exam mode. When it is enabled, all memory is locked and you need a computer to disable it.

intuxikated• 4 years ago

Ti84 here, basically the same

user3939382• 4 years ago

This is the founder who turned into a psycho tyrant (I forget his exact words, but something to the effect of, "we're not the same small company, I have money and lawyers now") on an ex-employee for an innocent side project, threatened to sue him, etc, until it went viral and then backpedaled and offered some non-apology.

I remember stuff like that and will never use this company's tools, which is a shame because I was a fan prior to that.

bin_bash• 4 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195

redbell• 4 years ago

That was a tragedy and an interesting story at the same time! I dived into it for about an hour and completely lost track of time.

Surprisingly, this story is ranked #8 [1] as the most upvoted HN story of all time.

The founder of Replit posted an apology [2], but got a storm of backlash.

Just a couple of weeks after joining the community, I quickly started noticing how powerful the HN community is. "Hackers" come here to post their complaints, pain points, and difficulties, and the community reacts in a positive way and, most of the time, gets their problems solved. Long life HN :)

_____________________

1. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27429234

joshxyz3• 4 years ago

damn that thread really got 4k internet points >.<

i dont know if that guy ever got his act straight but im still rooting for their company, especially for third-world countries where students only got mobile devices and got no access to computers and laptops.

it was horrible seeing students not being able to do hands-on activities during the recent covid years. let alone other problems like dysfunctional / laggy / buggy low-end mobiles, slow internet connection, oh dear.

ellis0n14• 4 years ago

Amjad copy 5 of 5 ideas of our 10 years development startup for mobile coding from Ukraine where World War right now. See also my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33267464

etaioinshrdlu• 4 years ago

Let it be a lesson... Hacker News never forgets?

Aliabid94• 4 years ago

A company is more than the personality of its CEO. Gates, Zuckerburg or Elon's personal faults shouldn't override the work and mission of thousands others.

duncan-donuts• 4 years ago

A company usually mirrors the values of its executives. You're right it shouldn't override the mission of the many, but the faults are baked in there somewhere.

cpsns• 4 years ago

It often does though, which is why having the right people in high positions is important. The CEO is the face of the company and for better or worse the company will be judged by their actions to some degree.

victor90002• 4 years ago

I would argue the exact opposite. Companies like Amazon and SpaceX have shaped their entire company culture using the values of their respective CEOs.

smnrchrds• 4 years ago

IIRC, not even an ex-employee, but an ex-intern.

ilrwbwrkhv2• 4 years ago

Oh wow that is really bad.

I remember YC pushing them heavily as a unicorn for a few days seemingly out of nowhere a while back, but that blitz has since died down.

Remains to be seen if they can be an actual viable business.

the_gipsy• 4 years ago

Paul regularly still pushes replit on his twitter.

sneak4• 4 years ago

I have a similar story about DigitalOcean from when I published the fact that they were intentionally leaking customer data cross-account because they didn’t understand thin/sparse provisioning of block devices.

One time I was interviewing somewhere and the interviewer spent the whole call super unprofessionally trashing a close personal friend of mine (also prominent in the industry) when I had mentioned working with them on some research.

I think everyone paying attention in this industry has a list of companies and people we will never work with.

golergka• 4 years ago

What if the founder is really a bad guy, but the product company releases is useful and could really improve lives of many. Should we use it and advertise to others who might find it useful? Or should we abstain from it to punish bad behaviour? Those aren't rhetorical questions, I honestly don't know.

rgoulter• 4 years ago

My sense is, if you catch someone being malicious in a situation where the power dynamic is so one sided, then be very careful before giving that person more power.

epolanski2• 4 years ago

I love coding on my tablet via codespaces.

It's perfect for pre bed time when I'm more interested in learning software than implementing features.

The experience isn't perfect because vs code was never meant to be a mobile editor but for writing few locs and trying stuff is okay.

simonebrunozzi• 4 years ago

This is going to be simply great for students. I bet Replit will get a huge boost in usage. Well done.

russellbeattie• 4 years ago

Microsoft's "Touch Develop" research project from a decade ago was actually amazingly productive and usable. It made each separate part of a line of code into a selectable element, and used predictive analysis to guess what your next entry would be with surprising accuracy. So, for example, if you've already created a variable within a specific scope like a function, when you've come to a point in a line where a variable would be useful like "a += [variable could go here]", you could just tap-select it from a list. Since the named elements were kept track of, you could select and rename a variable or function and it would automatically be changed everywhere. You could grab whole functions like this and move them around as needed.

It had some clunky bits and had to use its own language, but I've been surprised some of the ideas of the system hasn't made its way into normal IDEs. The key advantage is that you never had to worry about syntax. You couldn't forget a semicolon, because you were never typing out a line, just picking and choosing from options, while still piecing together a line of code as you would if you were typing it out manually. It was a higher level than normal coding, but well below something like Blockly. I think for beginners - who really struggle with syntax - it was brilliant, and even for more advanced developers it would be sort of handy not having to do find/replace or copy/paste and missing that last bracket or whatever.

Conceptually, imagine that instead of writing out a line of code as a text sentence, you were assembling the program's syntax tree by choosing from a pile of premade items you've created, and then being able to grab whole branches at a time and manipulate them. It was an interesting experiment.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/touchdevelo...

ellis0n14• 4 years ago

Hello, I'm Viktor from Ukraine, the author and founder of the Animation CPU mobile coding platform, which I've been developing for 10+5 years.

2 years ago during COVID-19, 2014-2022 war in Ukraine and financial pressure, I wrote to Amjad with my ideas about mobile coding and was looking for support.

He was introduced as a judge in the Pioneer.app remote accelerator and as an investor, and I had reason to trust him. As a result, he copied 5 ideas out of 5, about which he said that they say "I still do not understand what your project is about" and silently copied everything. I am a programmer with 20 years of experience and this looks like the biggest YC programmer scam in the world. Considering how russian maniacs want to steal everything and destroy Ukrainians and European civilization.

I asked Amjad to help my project, make a donation and help Ukraine, but he never did.

Lets try my original mobile dev project https://twitter.com/AcpuStudio

2012-2020 https://animationcpu.herokuapp.com (covid-19)

2012-2015 https://acpul.tumblr.com (original old school)

brap• 4 years ago

This is not surprising, based on his past behavior. I think you should make a “Tell HN” post.

ellis0n14• 4 years ago

I thought about it, but still can't figure out what benefit it will bring. PG loves Amjad very much, apparently this project scheme will allow programmers to be placed in the cages of the matrix.

Ukrainians die every day so that civilization can continue to build international unicorns, but I am against continued parasitism on Ukrainians. Is this what Steve Jobs, Apple and others were aiming for?

Since PG relies on Amjad, then the actions of anti-fraud organizations are needed if Amjad is related to the russian capital and money laundering, for example. This threatens the entire American startup ecosystem with YC.

Perhaps this is the business of lawyers and I cannot understand what pluses and minuses "Tell HN" will bring in progression.

rayhanadev4• 4 years ago

Okay well what did he copy? Your mobile app demos don't seem to have any similar features to the Replit app; and based on the digging I did, there weren't any novel features that Replit could have stolen.

Furthermore, the Replit app was developed by a separate team that has been working for months on a product, not by one man. Most of the features were initially developed on the website and implemented into the app, and I see no evidence of any similar features _at all_ in the video demos of your application. Certainly no copied UI/UX features and no actual IDE features.

The AI models that Replit trained were done using the latest in technology, not anything that was available over two years ago - hell they implemented OpenAI's Whisper voice recognition AI within weeks after it was released.

Beyond the first three sentences of this post, it spirals into a rant about Amjad's alliance with Russians? and then a comment afterwards calls for anti-fraud organizations to investigate Amjad being "related to the russian capital and money laundering". I say this post is trying to grab attention using pathos from the Ukrainian crisis and past trending hits from HN.

Before I get flamed in the comments, I would like to preface by saying I have my own opinions and am not a Replit stan haha. I did my research before arriving to the conclusions above. If Victor can provide some evidence that refutes my claims and shows correlations of novel ideas (I'm looking specifically at the AI features cause those were the most recent of Replit's releases) then I would be persuaded to believe otherwise.

-RA

ellis0n14• 4 years ago

You've misanalyzed the features. Please check my comments

- Amjad said "interesting" then said "not clear" and realized 3 key features asap https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268592 then I see twitter smiles only from him. Here is $1B in the check

- Features https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33269154 Coincidence?

There are a lot of features in the replit, but he implemented my project after the letter to Amjad. 4k HN toppic just confirms it. I couldn't believe it would happen so fast and it would be Amjad. Why no one else? I wouldn't be writing if I hadn't been involved with the issue for over ten years and hadn't been a mobile development evangelist. There are few such people and Amjad is not one of them.

About russians: I just assumed about russian capital, since only russians have an ideology to destroy Ukrainians by any means, and if the Amjad has Russian investors, then this is a problem. Our team has survived many ethnically targeted attacks since the Russian hybrid aggression has been going on since 2014 when russians shot down the MH17 airplane. All these years, the main methods were related to the theft of money, for example, a project where I had $2M stock options in 2008 was stolen from us. Therefore, there was a press and I wrote to Amjad asking for help. But this requires a separate thread.

PS: Of course, we live in a complex system of technologies and startups. And I must say that many technologies/projects/startups have already been stolen from me and I am a security expert and many projects have been destroyed. So I made titanic work for the project that is technically difficult to steal and Amjad proved it.

lolOkThen• 4 years ago

Very interesting, what specifically was copied?

aryamaan• 4 years ago

I like what Replit is doing with Ghost writing, and having DB, Auth, Analytics available for their Repls.

I wish all of these things were available with my current IDE. Replit is winning in other things and lacking in IDE game.

I also know that building rich IDE is not as much priority for them as much is onboarding new users to start programming on Replit.

It's just that I would enjoy all the features they are building with the comform of my existing Jetbrains IDEs

ellis0n14• 4 years ago

Lets follow and try much better alternative https://twitter.com/AcpuStudio because amjad replit copy our ideas without consensus with us

flappyeagle• 4 years ago

I want a token based keyboard with the following properties

Language and syntax awareness. When I’m writing JavaScript - it should provide keys for ‘if’ ‘each’ ‘function’ etc.

When I have unbalanced parens, braces etc, it should tell me how many levels deep I am and what context I’m in.

Instead of me naming variables it should generate random names and let me declare with a single tap. Provide easy refactoring tools so I can rename them later.

On mobile I want to manipulate symbols or the AST directly rather than rely on text input.

Take advantage of a keyboard that can display infinite variation and change on the fly.

vanjajaja1• 4 years ago

Good point. I'm very excited about the prospect of AST editors but never saw it working well with a keyboard. In a phone/touch environment it feels like forcing move. Would be cool to explore.

Svetlitski• 4 years ago

This reminds me of programming on a TI-84 calculator. You selected from a list of keywords (as opposed to having to type them out), and the language being TI-BASIC meant variable names were usually just one letter.

girvo3• 4 years ago

Implementing a simple program to run the quadratic formula on my TI was a lot of fun in school

Fatnino• 4 years ago

Variables were always one letter. You could however create a list with up to 100 entries and give it a custom name up to 5 letters long. This is in addition to the several (5?6?) default lists named L1 through L5or6.

stevewatson301• 4 years ago

Seems like a good use case (and perhaps the only useful use case) for the Touch Bar, though it has been understandably deprecated now.

pfortuny2• 4 years ago

We had this with the Spectrum in the 80s. Somehow someone decided it was not a good idea. Wonder why.

sedatk• 4 years ago

Spectrum had numerous input modes which made the typing experience complicated and prone to errors. On a mobile device, you can just add another key row on top of existing keyboard without incurring complexity. La Terminal is a great example.

harperlee• 4 years ago

When I have unbalanced parens, braces etc, it should tell me how many levels deep I am and what context I’m in.

Better yet: structural editing to avoid an unbalanced thing ever.

another_story2• 4 years ago

As a teacher the basic Replit stuff is great, but their class management stuff is atrocious and unintuitive. For example, under one class I created 9 units with a number of challenges under each unit. You copy that to a new class (Team is what they call it) and all sections disappear). Then if you want to reorganize, even if there are sections, you have to drag and drop, scrolling up or down the page and repeating the drag to get it to the right section.

Another thing is when you organize sections there is no drag and drop, but arrows moving boxes up and down.

I've sent in dozens of issues for various bugs and annoyances, and even dug into the js to point out how to fix things, but after nearly 2 years they are still there.

Kuldr• 4 years ago

As another teacher completely agree.

I have managed to find a work around to the import/reorder problem. Replit organises by alphabetical order so we have simply numbered our challenges 01.01, 01.02, ..., 02.01, etc. Then on import they all live in the default section in order. We then only use the sections feature for projects/tests.

Now Replit education is free I doubt they will be prioritising any fixes or qol improvements for that product. It does seem to be working as intended though we have several 17/18 year olds that are using Replit for personal projects and one that is fanatic and uses Replit for everything.

another_story2• 4 years ago

Hah, yah, that was my exact solution as well. Great minds.

I've pushed my high schoolers towards VSCode after a stint with replit, and after a bit of grumbling they've come to see the benefit. I think the space is ripe for opportunity though. A stripped down and education focused version would be eat into replit's market share pretty quickly.

sneilan1• 4 years ago

I already have a mobile editing setup using blinkssh, Tailscale, mosh, tmux, lunarvim, typescript and Lsp servers on my iPhone 13. It works surprisingly well and while it’s slow to code on, I can actually do it. Autocomplete works too and typescript really helpful in catching bugs made by bad keyboard strokes.

It won’t ever replace my mouse and keyboard but it is useable. Just slow.

cft• 4 years ago

In Termux on Android, i can code in vim and compile whatever i want, Rust, C, on my phone, in Linux. I can install python. I can write a python script that makes my phone ring and vibrate on certain events. I use Termux with Unexpected Keyboard.

Both Termux and Unexpected Keyboard are open source and can be downloaded from f-droid store.

johnfn2• 4 years ago

Is this the same Replit who used legal threats to shut down an open source project made by an intern after they left[1]? I don't know how anyone can in good conscience support this company.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195

shepherdjerred• 4 years ago

Which organizations do you support whose worst action was intimidating and intern?

paulryanrogers• 4 years ago

What bearing does that have here? We all make judgement calls on incomplete information. Doesn't mean we should overlook this situation when considering this app.

ctvo• 4 years ago

I haven’t forgotten either. The CEO bullied someone weaker because they thought they could get away with it. Why would you join a “community” of learners led by someone like that?

rayhanadev4• 4 years ago

Well the open source project did actually use similar Replit internals, I don't even work for Replit but with a lot of poking at their previous APIs and their own open source softwares I was able to figure that out. TBH that whole ordeal felt like a bar brawl between and employer and a fired employee, though. Neither handled the situation correctly and both were in the wrong.

girvo3• 4 years ago

both were in the wrong

Alright, let's assume that's true for a moment, for sake of argument. One of the parties we're talking about has massively more power than the other, so I'm inclined to have higher standards for them than that of an intern.

adenozine• 4 years ago

This is like trying to cancel a homeowner because they spoke rudely to a home invader.

He was out of line, for sure, but he was not wrong, from what I read about the situation.

I’ve seen replit used in classroom settings both before and after that kerfuffle and it’s an extraordinary product., imho. If I were a teacher, I’d probably use it.

eloisius• 4 years ago

A home invasion is a pretty bad analogy for someone that created a competing project in their own time after working for them. There was never any plausible allegation that the intern stole their IP as I remember.

johnfn2• 4 years ago

You’re comparing an open source repo to a home invasion? My god man, you must realize that those aren’t even close to the same magnitude. Maybe more like walking within 10 miles of a house - but that house is actually a heavily fortified castle with trebuchets.

matheusmoreira• 4 years ago

I haven't forgotten that but I still respect their effort here. I think we really need a good app to write code on mobile devices so that they aren't merely consumer devices.

This Replit app seems to be well polished but I don't like that it needs an account. I opened the app and the first thing I saw was a sign up screen. I expected to see a programming language picker or text editor.

aufhebung• 4 years ago

I don't see why you would implement google docs like multi person editing. There's a reason basically every VCS has discrete commits and anybody who has ever coded anything knows why.

beanjuiceII• 4 years ago

developers: i need six monitors to work also developers?: I can't wait to code on my tiny phone screen

not for me

nneonneo• 4 years ago

I love both Pythonista and play.js on iOS, and it'll be nice to have another option. The former two, though, run the code entirely on-device, but from the looks of it Replit will run code on their servers? While that's not a surprise (given repl.it's model), it's definitely a little less useful for me (personally) since it'll require a persistent internet connection to test anything, and the code won't have access to anything on your device (as far as I can tell?).

I happen to really like the way play.js lets you run a full-blown Node.js server on your iPhone with access to native socket APIs (torrent client! on your non-jailbroken iPhone!), and the way Pythonista lets you access iOS native APIs via ctypes.

monocularvision• 4 years ago

Huge fan of Pythonista. Hadn’t heard about play.js. I will check it out! Thanks.

dinobones• 4 years ago

This is the kind of project you build when you realize your startup has no competitive advantage. You lose focus and just build pointless stuff like this and shoot it out into the void and hope something happens.

dumpstate• 4 years ago

Input is a problem. Can’t imagine using mobile keyboard for anything more complex than texting. Curious whether Replit will integrate with voice coding solutions one day (like https://github.com/cursorless-dev/cursorless).

nbzso• 4 years ago

Coding on a touch screen? My Kinesis Advantage is smiling at me with confidence.:)

OezMaster• 4 years ago

Can someone explain why FSharp has dotnet-sdk 2.1 while CSharp has dotnet-sdk 6.0? This has never made sense to me.

ogou• 4 years ago

I worked in Haiti for 4 years. Very few Haitians had a desktop computer. Some had laptops, but they were uncommon. But, everybody has a cellphone. The last time I went, I saw Andriod internet capable phones all over the place. I believe it's the same in many other parts of the world. This could be hugely useful and popular for people outside the typical tech industry pipelines. Commenters are underestimating the ingenuity of folks in those areas.

zubairq• 4 years ago

Quite funny. Did repl.it copy our logo at yazz.com or did we copy theirs?

ezdub• 4 years ago

Excellent. Now we just need $8 Google cardboard with a strap and a bluetooth keyboard to work anywhere :)

Hey Repl.it — please make a 3D coding environment for cardboard mode. And maybe some head tracking for more screen estate. The future is here, time to distribute it.

jdmg94• 4 years ago

is the runtime still online or will it be running python/node locally?

muttantt• 4 years ago

ridiculous that anyone would subject themselves to the torture of programming on a mobile phone

fire• 4 years ago

I'm excited for this; the performance for me on android is shockingly poor right now, but I'm hopeful.

amruthreddi• 4 years ago

This is awesome.

Replit Mobile App

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