rayhanadev

love seeing purdue hackers folks on hackernews :)

This was so much fun at BURST ! Congrats on launching it!!!

And in that you are correct! :) I 100% agree that there were better ways for Amjad to have handled that.

That being said Radon did copy some Replit internal design choices for Riju, which was completely overlooked because he was able to play off as the weaker individual. I'm sure in most other situations open-sourcing the work of another company, even if its something you designed as an intern, is not ethical in any case. Furthermore, Radon did not make any concession to the incident. He went on with life, after the incident and continues to portray Replit as the villain with references to the blog post and the way it was written to incriminate, not objectively oversee the problem.

In short, he used pathos to play y'all.

Meanwhile Amjad apologized _extensively_ for his actions and allowed Riju to continue, despite using what was previously (not anymore) Replit's internal design.

In the world of OSS people love the underdog and hate "big tech", when there's more gray area that could be explored. Not that this is a defense of Amjad or an attack on Radon, but there's more to this story that needs to be seen in order to get the bigger picture :).

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.

okay well, let's discuss your three key features

- Mobile IDE: this is not something completely novel, there have been code editors for Android since forever. Replit created a mobile editor with a novel UI/UX and implemented their existing Goval Protocol (one I have studied extensively haha) into the application. Furthermore you can't claim the idea of a "Mobile IDE" can be stolen, its not a feature and that's like saying "Mobile Notes" can be a stolen concept. Not copying you so far.

- Real-Time Reverse Debugger: Replit uses Replay.io for time travel debugging, I've been around to watch that implementation grow. Amjad invests in Replay.io because Replit uses it xD. Replay.io has existed for some time, and on the topic of why Amjad didn't invest in you - you didn't present well (no offense). He's a busy man and your product didn't strike him immediately, that's okay move on the the next investor.

- Full git and video history: I might not be interpreting this one correctly so I'm sorry if i get this wrong, but version control has existed for some time. You can't say version control in IDEs is novel, everything from Atom and VSC to Jetbrains IDEs use it.

and the other thing you mentioned:

- Team Development: Replit is literally the frontiers person when it comes to live code editing and multiplayer. You cannot say this was copied they had this long before you started developing in 2020.

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When you say "I just show Amjad the direction, and he completely ignored me" I'm sorry but not really, the concept of a Replit App has been in the works for some time, you just have to keep in mind Replit is a startup and its moving and hiring at its own pace. As I said before, Amjad might not have invested in you because you didn't present well. The opportunity was lost, its okay move on. You were building an existing product in a new world, but the big dog arrived.

I can't say I understand what it would feel like to have a project I've been developing for two years suddenly be thrown into the shadows because a bigger company came by with their product, but I know it doesn't justify Russophobia. I'm aware of the situation in Ukraine, but you don't need to drag politics and slander into HN for the sake of besmirching someone. Your comments draw too eerie a similarity with antisemitism in Nazi Germany. If you are going to continue defending your product and this idea that it was stolen, at least drop the politics they're unjustified.

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