[HN Gopher] Replit Apps
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Replit Apps
Author : razin
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-05-12 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.replit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.replit.com)
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Removed.
| tangert wrote:
| good catch - updating :)
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Deleting my comment then. Cheers!
| haysstanford wrote:
| Looks incredible!
| smoldesu wrote:
| This looks neat to me, but I'm not really sure what advantage
| this distribution model offers over their current offerings. For
| one, every user is going to need some way to execute your
| arbitrary code, meaning most will need a sandbox at the very
| least, all the way up to a small dedicated VPS for beefier
| programs. Of course this begs the question, will there be a
| pricing model? Will certain languages be more expensive to run
| than others? Will some languages be outright omitted? Will each
| execution of the program also include compilation time?
|
| Hats off to the repl team for making this work, but there's a lot
| of roadblocks ahead. I'm sure they have the immediate capital to
| make it work in the short-term, but I struggle to see how this
| would be a sustainable project...
| skybrian wrote:
| These are web browser apps. The code runs in sandboxes on
| servers maintained by Repl.
|
| Pricing is here: https://replit.com/site/pricing
| nullspace wrote:
| Maybe I'm just naive, but I find this insanely exciting.
| Particularly the analogy of Youtube vs TikTok. Having the source
| code right next to the executable, right there in your browser
| seems very powerful.
|
| If it pans out right, the next gen of memes could be games like
| the ones showcased here, and then people "fork" it, and change
| some of the code and make it their own.
|
| I have nothing to do with repl.it, just really happy to see this.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I remember doing this in high school manually. We took a fly
| swatting game and replaced the sprites with my friends face
| (regular and splatted). A platform that enabled all of this
| would be out of control
| Kiro wrote:
| Where do you see the showcase?
| lancesells wrote:
| This is really interesting because this is what glitch.com
| seemed to promote as their number one feature for awhile. From
| their latest homepage it seems like they took a step back and
| are promoting a web-based IDE with the forks being a little
| hard to find.
| anildash wrote:
| We're always iterating, testing out different emphasis on
| creation vs. discovery since we care a lot about both. But
| every one of the 10 million+ apps on Glitch already has a
| page where it lives so folks can remix it or share it with
| their team or add it to a collection.
|
| So if you take something like the official Eleventy starter,
| it has a page like this, and you can see who else has added
| it to a collection, etc. https://glitch.com/~11ty
|
| Generally people are finding Glitch apps through their peers
| who make them, or embedded in the docs they read, or by
| someone sharing it at a hackathon or whatever, so we de-
| emphasized direct discovery on the homepage. If folks like
| being able to find things that way, I'm sure we'll bring it
| back; it's not a comment on the utility of having the ability
| to create, share & reuse millions of web apps easily,
| obviously we're hugely in favor of that.
| easrng wrote:
| People on the Glitch Support forum (Including me) have
| expressed interest in the return of the homepage so I'm
| happy to hear you are considering it.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| If you want to go even further back, Microsoft's Popfly
| experiment from 15-ish years ago was a similar idea:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Popfly
| lancesells wrote:
| Thanks. I don't recall Popfly at all.
|
| Even further: Dub Music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dub_m
| usic#%22Versions%22_and_e...
| omarhaneef wrote:
| Does replit have a really high cadence compared to most startups
| or am I surprised because I just see the occasional announcement
| and these things brew for a long time under the radar?
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I have also been very impressed by their speed and would like
| to know their secret. They were founded in 2016 and I have only
| noticed this speed of iteration in the past 6-12 months. Was
| there an actual uptick? And was there some work or
| infrastructure investment in their early years that is now
| paying dividends?
| omarhaneef wrote:
| I agree. It seemed like another competitor in the space along
| with cloud9, koding, code anywhere, shiftedit, code envy,
| nitrous and who knows how many others founded earlier, and
| then it seemed to move away adding on features.
|
| Really the big moves are towards hosting, and I always
| thought that after AWS bought cloud9, they would dominate
| that space, but cloud9 seems frozen.
|
| I wonder if Digital Ocean or someone buys them to bring about
| the cloud IDE/hosting combo. (Actually, I have no idea how
| large replit is and if that is even reasonable).
| andrewljohnson wrote:
| My opinion is repl.it iterates fast, the CEO founder is very
| shipping and community oriented, and he's a good follow on
| Twitter: https://twitter.com/amasad
| nirushiv wrote:
| They were/are also incubated by YCombinator. They're a
| darling here, for all the reasons you mentioned, but I also
| get the impression that they build in a "see what sticks"
| manner. I've found some of their recent announcements neat
| but not immediately valuable long-term or for non-casual
| users.
| abiro wrote:
| I can't read the post without getting a headache, because there
| are three flashy, autoplaying gifs in it that can't be scrolled
| out of view.
| sandmansandine wrote:
| Kinda surprised this worked so well but I hit the edit on
| replit button, forked the blog and removed the gifs for you:
| https://replit-blog.ericsandine.repl.co/apps
| swyx wrote:
| how does Replit Apps compare to Glitch? i feel like there are so
| many similar attempts to crack this nut and while the choice is
| nice, i remember being a little overwhelmed when i was starting
| out.
| amasad wrote:
| Off the top -- things that make Replit better make Apps better:
|
| - more modalities: you can make CLI apps, web apps, even native
| apps (like PyGame)
|
| - more language support
|
| - more complete platform: auth, db, etc
|
| - bigger community
|
| On Apps more specifically, the hashtag, trending, and the
| general exploration UX aspect is going to be huge for communal
| creativity.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| Lundum Dare 48 was a couple weeks ago and since I was aware of
| the jam from its promotion on pygame.org and I'm a python guy I
| wanted to make something in pygame. Come to find out, replit has
| a pygame enabled environment.
|
| It's not very fast. It worked for some simple animations and a
| stupid little turn based colony building simulator but I dunno if
| it could handle something more arcade style.
|
| I wouldn't call the IDE great. It's all on the web and subject to
| unsurprising latency. I ran into a couple of weird bugs.
|
| But I spent zero time setting up my environment. Zero time
| building binaries. Zero time on cross platform testing.
| Publishing (to the jam) was literally pasting the link to the
| replit on my jam page. Everybody got my source code and a place
| to hack on it. That is pretty damn cool.
|
| For the curious: https://replit.com/@BrianDavis7/A-Disguised-Far-
| Muse
| amasad wrote:
| Awesome Brian! I love hearing stories like this. And
| interesting game. I love the stick-figure animation.
|
| >I wouldn't call the IDE great. It's all on the web and subject
| to unsurprising latency. I ran into a couple of weird bugs.
|
| We have a big IDE quality sprint coming -- we just hired
| amazing engineers fully focused on it (and still hiring
| https://replit.com/careers) and we're going to be making big
| gains soon :D
|
| You can always email me feedback directly as well
| amjad@replit.com
| danr4 wrote:
| Is it another attempt to "make programming easy"?. I keep
| wondering if it's even possible. Can everyone be code literate?
| or do you have to have an "algorithmic" (for lack of a better
| word) way of thinking? Is it something like woodworking class vs
| real carpentry?
|
| Minecraft, for example, opened a door to system thinking to a lot
| of young people, but there's probably many more that just like
| the fun and not the understanding and craft, so maybe those
| people's brain already leaned towards it?
|
| Right now we're in peak "Everyone should know how to code" but
| sometimes it seems like we keep chasing the golden goose - Visual
| Basic, Dreamweaver, Node based programming, Webflow etc.
|
| Edit: forgot to add that the CEO has that confident
| delusional/visionary vibe so this certainly fits the bill. Time
| will tell which it is.
| tangert wrote:
| Are you referring to Replit as a whole? I'm curious what your
| comment has to do with the launch of an app store specifically.
| kannanvijayan wrote:
| > Can everyone be code literate?
|
| Why not, for the same reason that everyone can be - to
| reasonable standards - be literate?
|
| This is merely a new and powerful form of literacy that has
| become relevant due to a particular set of technological
| circumstances, but structurally it's not that different from
| the printing press preceding widespread literacy of the regular
| sort.
|
| And no doubt this form of literacy is powerful. It relates to
| an understanding of how to describe the processing of
| information in various contexts. In an increasingly information
| overloaded world, the ability to use the tool of your time to
| process the information you need will become a critical
| ability.
|
| I think one fallacy we can implicitly succumb to is the notion
| that "everybody knowing how to program" somehow relates to
| everyone being a programmer.
|
| Everyone knowing how to read and write doesn't mean everyone is
| an author or a technical writer. But everyone _does_ use their
| ability to read and write to make their own work more
| productive within their contexts. And even in a personal
| context, being able to read an ingredients list, or write a
| shopping list, is underpinned by literacy.
|
| What's so hard to imagine about a future where everyone knows
| how to build small useful programs for themselves, and just as
| everyone has access to post it notes and notepads, everyone
| having access to a few small devices that allow them to use
| that literacy to build programs that are useful to them in
| their day to day activities?
|
| It's hard to imagine the specifics of how that might be
| applied, but it seems easy to imagine the transformative power
| of that sort of a casual power being not just available to the
| masses, but understood and able to be exercised by all of them.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| > Why not, for the same reason that everyone can be - to
| reasonable standards - be literate?
|
| Not everyone can become literate. Very roughly 0.1% of people
| lack the mental ability to read, even given lots of training.
| Flipping your argument around, it's totally possible that
| programming is that much more difficult than reading that
| 0.1% of the population isn't unable, but more like 10%.
| offtop5 wrote:
| I think everyone should be able to write a Python script to
| change a CSV file. Likewise with reading, everyone can read
| stuff on Instagram. Most of us can't read the Magna Carta.
|
| Likewise I'm pretty good but I can't code in Assembly
| tocodeornot wrote:
| I agree that not everybody needs to code. I disagree with the
| implication that the current ecosystem isn't excluding some
| people who could code: it is.
|
| Frankly, a lot of people who currently write code are only
| writing code because they stumbled across the right combination
| of tools: reducing the barrier to entry will only improve
| things.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Which tools do people stumble across?
|
| I never used any tools like Replit when I was learning to
| code.
| mmmateo wrote:
| A lot of people know basic HTML/CSS and the next generation
| is learning it in their computer classes, but there aren't
| many tools that let them leverage it to build actual
| websites. If there were, people wouldn't be so forced into
| proprietary, expensive solutions. And a lot more people would
| realize code isn't that hard. That's what we're trying to do
| with primo (https://primo.af).
| hctaw wrote:
| I think the problem is equating "coding" to "algorithmic
| thinking."
|
| Most coding problems are wiring stuff up. If you can change a
| tire or put together a LEGO set, you can probably write code.
|
| The problem with the golden geese that you're pointing out is
| mostly one of tooling, in my opinion. Undergrads at top CS
| programs are as clueless as your grandmother about developing
| software because the tools are either toys for children or
| extremely sharp knives with a blade on the handle. This is a
| problem that replit is trying to solve.
| ztratar wrote:
| This is really exciting. Feels like the start of something way
| bigger.
|
| With an app store and server infrastructure with public ports, I
| could also see API/automation browsing built-in.
|
| And hasn't nearly every strategy in the history of computing that
| started with gaming succeeded wildly?
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(page generated 2021-05-12 23:01 UTC)