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

repl.it

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

#161

Post by Alex3917 »

brownbat wrote: post #160
Alex3917 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet the number of times I've seen beginners completely discouraged or even give up programming forever because they have conda and pip and brew and pyenv installed and can't run a basic script after 4 hours of trying because environment mess-up is ridiculous. Definitely true. Getting Python to run correctly is not only one of the hardest parts of learning to code, but comes right at the beginning so before peop…

> Getting Python to run correctly is not only one of the hardest parts of learning to code, but comes right at the beginning so before people have experienced any success. This is a surreal statement to read as someone who basically just writes and runs nearly pure Python in a text editor.

> This is a surreal statement to read as someone who basically just writes and runs nearly pure Python in a text editor.

Go help out at meetups for Python beginners and you'll see what I mean.

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

#162

Post by tomglynch »

amasad wrote: post #156
throwaway473 wrote: post #62

Repl.it's current business model appears to be giving cloud services away for free, attracting lots of users, and using their high user counts to get more venture capital funding to spend on giving away cloud services for free. Am I missing something, or is this basically the programming equivalent to MoviePass? Surely as soon as they start trying to be profitable, people will find some other startup to give them clo…

I see you keep creating throwaways to spread misinformation. I answered you elsewhere but here we go again: we've been bootstrapped and profitable for a while before we got funding and we still make lots of money. We grow our MRR from classroom and hacker plan more than 5% monthly: https://repl.it/pricing Go find something better to do.

I agree with you, but suggest you lose the personal attacks. Not a good look

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

#163

Post by Xeronate »

brownbat wrote: post #160
Alex3917 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet the number of times I've seen beginners completely discouraged or even give up programming forever because they have conda and pip and brew and pyenv installed and can't run a basic script after 4 hours of trying because environment mess-up is ridiculous. Definitely true. Getting Python to run correctly is not only one of the hardest parts of learning to code, but comes right at the beginning so before peop…

> Getting Python to run correctly is not only one of the hardest parts of learning to code, but comes right at the beginning so before people have experienced any success. This is a surreal statement to read as someone who basically just writes and runs nearly pure Python in a text editor.

So does pretty much everyone. The problem is with setting up virtual environments and managing packages.

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

#164

Post by gautamdivgi »

7ewis wrote: post #113
sixhobbits wrote: post #77

Python, the "second best language for everything", has had a huge impact for teaching people programming. Beginners can do useful and interesting things and solve real problems after a few hours of learning. And yet the number of times I've seen beginners completely discouraged or even give up programming forever because they have conda and pip and brew and pyenv installed and can't run a basic script after 4 hours o…

I've been using Python as my go-to language for a while. It works well and I feel like I understand the basics, but pipenv, pyenv, pip etc. seem needlessly complex. Especially when I'm trying to create a serverless framework package, or upload a zip to AWS Lambda. Never know what tool to use to install packages, or how to specify the python version... or even change the python version on my Mac. Homebrew Python, syst…

I use pyenv - https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv. Allows me to manage multiple versions of python and switch between them. The only pain I have encountered is the pip cache.

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

#165

Post by jdminhbg »

sixhobbits wrote: post #77

Python, the "second best language for everything", has had a huge impact for teaching people programming. Beginners can do useful and interesting things and solve real problems after a few hours of learning. And yet the number of times I've seen beginners completely discouraged or even give up programming forever because they have conda and pip and brew and pyenv installed and can't run a basic script after 4 hours o…

> And yet the number of times I've seen beginners completely discouraged or even give up programming forever because they have conda and pip and brew and pyenv installed and can't run a basic script after 4 hours of trying because environment mess-up is ridiculous.

Beginners? I've been in the industry for a decade and the same applies to me. The Python environment situation is a trainwreck.

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

#166

Post by Hbthegreat »

jdminhbg wrote: post #165
sixhobbits wrote: post #77

Python, the "second best language for everything", has had a huge impact for teaching people programming. Beginners can do useful and interesting things and solve real problems after a few hours of learning. And yet the number of times I've seen beginners completely discouraged or even give up programming forever because they have conda and pip and brew and pyenv installed and can't run a basic script after 4 hours o…

> And yet the number of times I've seen beginners completely discouraged or even give up programming forever because they have conda and pip and brew and pyenv installed and can't run a basic script after 4 hours of trying because environment mess-up is ridiculous. Beginners? I've been in the industry for a decade and the same applies to me. The Python environment situation is a trainwreck.

I share this feeling. Going to python for the first time as someone that has developed software for 16+ years was incredibly more difficult and time consuming than I would have hoped. I still don't understand how it has become the default go to language for teaching new coders when it has quite unintuitive syntax / packages and setup steps.

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

#167

Post by thrower123 »

jimbokun wrote: post #115
ryandrake wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was one of the great things about the ol’ Commodore 64, decades ago: straight from the factory, power on, and a second later, you were in a fully set up BASIC developer environment/REPL. How did things get so complicated?

Dependency management is the big one, I think. It’s still pretty easy to run default Python prompt in MacOS (as long as you know what the terminal is). But it gets complex really fast the moment you want to use a cool library. Which is probably a few minutes into your coding tutorial.

How is this so difficult? I haven't done much since the 2.X days, and I was on Windows, but I used to grab the PyGame installer and have sprites drawing on screen in 15 minutes 15 years ago.

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

#168

Post by gmmeyer »

qaminsod wrote: post #152
sixhobbits wrote: post #77

Python, the "second best language for everything", has had a huge impact for teaching people programming. Beginners can do useful and interesting things and solve real problems after a few hours of learning. And yet the number of times I've seen beginners completely discouraged or even give up programming forever because they have conda and pip and brew and pyenv installed and can't run a basic script after 4 hours o…

I think there is a lot of value in going through the pains of setting up a development environment, writing build scripts, debugging environment issues, etc. > Beginners can do useful and interesting things and solve real problems after a few hours of learning. What real problems are beginners actually solving? I literally cannot think of a single one. Most introductory programming tutorials I've seen start off with…

I really couldn't roll my eyes harder at this. Yes, they're not building a distributed system. But they can do things that make them feel like they're solving problems.

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

#169

Post by [deleted] »

amasad wrote: post #156
throwaway473 wrote: post #62

Repl.it's current business model appears to be giving cloud services away for free, attracting lots of users, and using their high user counts to get more venture capital funding to spend on giving away cloud services for free. Am I missing something, or is this basically the programming equivalent to MoviePass? Surely as soon as they start trying to be profitable, people will find some other startup to give them clo…

I see you keep creating throwaways to spread misinformation. I answered you elsewhere but here we go again: we've been bootstrapped and profitable for a while before we got funding and we still make lots of money. We grow our MRR from classroom and hacker plan more than 5% monthly: https://repl.it/pricing Go find something better to do.

[deleted]
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