Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

repl.it

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 231 posts

Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

#81

Post by throwaway342 »

amasad wrote: post #64
nodesocket wrote: post #60

What are the pros/come versus using a mature online editor such as Cloud9, that supports direct terminal access to the backend instance and FTP/SFTP support? Though I will admit I was disappointed when AWS acquired Cloud9.

Good question. Repl.it is all about instantness, you should be able to get a REPL really fast[0]. If you want to host a webserver you should be able to do it quickly from the same interface[1], if you want to share your work then that should also be possible[2]. You could code and ship a small webserver on Repl.it faster than you can sign up for Cloud9. Repl.it is also what's no called "Serverless" in that it's logic…

> The previous generation of online IDEs -- C9, Nitrous, Koding -- were awesome, yet most pivoted or shutdown. It's good to ask why that is? We think it might be that they were not "web native."

Maybe it's because giving away cloud services for free is not a sustainable business model.

Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

#82

Post by khalilravanna »

fastball wrote: post #78
Shane325 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting indeed. Definitely weeds out applicants who are not familiar with the command line.

I know it's a brave new world, but there isn't a single working developer that isn't at least aware of the command line, right?

I'd say "aware" and "familiar with" are two totally different groups. And while I'd agree that "aware" seems like it'd approach 100% of the general programmer pop., from my experience "familiar with" is a surprisingly and saddeningly lower than 100% percentage.

Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

#83

Post by amasad »

throwaway342 wrote: post #81
amasad wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. Repl.it is all about instantness, you should be able to get a REPL really fast[0]. If you want to host a webserver you should be able to do it quickly from the same interface[1], if you want to share your work then that should also be possible[2]. You could code and ship a small webserver on Repl.it faster than you can sign up for Cloud9. Repl.it is also what's no called "Serverless" in that it's logic…

> The previous generation of online IDEs -- C9, Nitrous, Koding -- were awesome, yet most pivoted or shutdown. It's good to ask why that is? We think it might be that they were not "web native." Maybe it's because giving away cloud services for free is not a sustainable business model.

All of those companies charged for their product and had enterprise plans ;)

Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

#84

Post by albertgoeswoof »

fastball wrote: post #78
Shane325 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting indeed. Definitely weeds out applicants who are not familiar with the command line.

I know it's a brave new world, but there isn't a single working developer that isn't at least aware of the command line, right?

There are lots of developers that have a build system with ide etc set up for them and never touch the CLI for years. Think iOS and .net

Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

#85

Post by 9712263 »

jakebasile wrote: post #39
Shane325 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting indeed. Definitely weeds out applicants who are not familiar with the command line.

It also weeds out people who don't have time for "cute" little games like that.

Actually, grepping necessary information from the files is more efficient than reading a bloated web page from job site with infinite scrolling where your Ctrl + F is not working.

Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

#86

Post by throwaway872 »

amasad wrote: post #83
throwaway342 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The previous generation of online IDEs -- C9, Nitrous, Koding -- were awesome, yet most pivoted or shutdown. It's good to ask why that is? We think it might be that they were not "web native." Maybe it's because giving away cloud services for free is not a sustainable business model.

All of those companies charged for their product and had enterprise plans ;)

Sure, but no one used them -- just like Repl.it, pretty much all of their monthly active users were only there for the free plan, and they left as soon as the companies tried to monetize.

Koding, in particular, went through pretty much exactly the same cycle as Repl.it a few years ago. They started out getting tons of users by giving cloud servers away for free, targeted mainly at children/education market. Then they started selling premium plans for beefier servers, but no one bought them. Then, they tried to become a cloud infrastructure company[1] and created a distributed filesystem product[2], which seems to be exactly your plan as well!

As it turns out, the educational users were only there because going on a free website is easier than installing Python on your computer, so when Koding started trying to charge for stuff, no one bought it.

[1]: https://blog.koding.com/koding-is-not-an-online-ide-e2693f74... [2]: https://www.koding.com/docs/kd

Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

#87

Post by myroon5 »

mark212 wrote: post #14

the jobs link is interesting. Takes you to a functioning command line but has no other hints or instructions. An interesting gating function: those who don't know how to proceed further (or can't problem-solve sufficiently to find out) aren't likely to succeed in the role and can safely be excluded. Might also have the added bonus of being safe from headhunter bot scrapers.

A lot of the text is overlapping for me on mobile.

Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

#88

Post by sirodoht »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #36
amasad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tongue-in-cheek :-P but I do think that Viaweb is relevant here: their original business model (it was called Webgen) was to let people host their sites with them. They were also the first to figure out "cloud" where they ran their customers generated code on their infrastructure. I believe after building Viaweb, PG had a similar idea of an IDE + language + infrastructure to allow people to build and ship application…

So, they basically invented Software As A Service? Relevant indeed.

Here is a (recent) very interesting interview with PG, among others, talking about Viaweb. Bonus points: very funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WO5kJChg3w

Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

#89

Post by luizfzs »

mark212 wrote: post #14

the jobs link is interesting. Takes you to a functioning command line but has no other hints or instructions. An interesting gating function: those who don't know how to proceed further (or can't problem-solve sufficiently to find out) aren't likely to succeed in the role and can safely be excluded. Might also have the added bonus of being safe from headhunter bot scrapers.

I see a shell, I type `ls`. It's how life works.

Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others

#90

Post by amasad »

Just a fun meta note: I initially authored this blogpost and collaborated on it with my colleagues using repl.it. It's also hosted under https://repl.vc and you can get to the source this way https://repl.vc/__repl

Moreover, lots of people are discovering our jobs (https://repl.it/jobs) page. It's worth noting that it's as part of an ongoing project we're calling repl.run: ship terminal apps as websites. We released it in beta last week and we're already seeing lots of fun apps built with it:

- Text-based rpg game: https://rpg.dtfps.repl.run/

- snake game: https://sssnake.ericqweinstein.repl.run/

- cool interactive terminal animation in ruby: https://key-press-2.theangryepicbanana.repl.run/

- Pure Python Bash Shell: https://ppbs.neocities.org/

- Chatroom: https://chatroom.pyelias.repl.run/

- Our jobs page standalone: https://jerbs.util.repl.run/

More on repl.run: https://repl.it/talk/announcements/BetaExplorers-Announcing-...

Post reply on HN