In light of the recent post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18269007 about LP funding sources, is there any insight into the sources of where the money from this round is coming from?
Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
191–200 of 231 posts
Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
#192Earlier 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.
My company's python backend refuses to deploy on my work laptop, so I don't program in python professionally anymore.
Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
#193This seems like a solid product and I will definitely keep it in mind. One thing that I really like is the number of languages you support ( https://repl.it/languages ). I would recommend adding support for Elixir and Phoenix down the road. While the community is small (compared to other languages/frameworks), it is growing, and the community is great. Congrats on securing your funding and all the best!
Definitely on the roadmap. We're working on making it easy to add languages by creating common abstractions. As a start we just open-sourced Prybar: "a universal interpreter front-end" https://github.com/replit/prybar
congrats amjad! I think I was one of your first interviewing candidates (didn't get the job) but I'm missing my favorite programming languages (Julia, Elixir) on repl.it!! Hope they show up soon.
Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
This doesn't answer your questions, but I firmly believe this is the major reason node took off in popularity. Npm let you install packages minutes after being installed, and they went right into a folder right there, and they didn't conflict with any other packages on your system. I was like you and played with python for years but never anything larger than small scripts, and every time I went to do "real" python I…
On the other hand, as someone who knows a little js from the bad old days but has been doing python for over a decade, trying to get up and running with a modern js environment seems totally cray cray to me. Usually, for me, I start by installing node. Ok, so I guess I need to install npm now. No problem, I guess that's like pip. Oh, I need yarn. It's better? Ok, I guess python had the same growing pains with easy_in…
Node.JS is good enough to use as is without any compile to JS or frameworks in between. It is very nice to write a server or network tool in JavaScript. If you want to use it as front-end glue you can still stay lean, just use the built-in http module, or npm install SockJS or other websocket module to communicate with the web page, which you also can write without any frameworks or build tools.
Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Koding was launched in January 2012. 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18278979 seems to say you aren't profitable at the moment 3. In other words, you're giving away like 5-10x the amount of free servers Koding did. If burning money didn't work for them then how would burning it five times faster help you? Are you trying to make it up in volume or something? 4. Alright, just for you I'll stop using throwawa…
> 3. In other words, you're giving away like 5-10x the amount of free servers Koding did. If burning money didn't work for them, then how would burning it five times faster help you? Are you trying to make it up in volume or something? In Sep we spent $15k for all of our infrastructure cost and we made all of it back and then some with subscriptions. It's serverless, we only spend resources when people actually execu…
Thanks for the reply and transparency. I am actually a little surprised and refreshed that you were able to post infrastructure costs ($15k in Sept). I'm assuming this is on AWS Lambda?
> Then they started selling premium plans for beefier servers, but no one bought them..
I still think this has validity, especially with high-tech products that have a free plan. How do you know how big the business can grow in terms of revenue when the vast majority of your users are free? In my experience developers are a VERY hard crowd to get to pay for things while being enthusiastic early adopters.
Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
#196 jobs@repl.it:~$ cat tech
#!/usr/bin/env bash
echo -e "$(cat pages/our-tech.txt)"jobs@repl.it:~$ ./tech
...
As for our infrastructure, we're building a new kind
of computing platform: it's Serverless in that users
don't have to care about the underlying resources,
but it's not Serverless in that it's stateful.
...
Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is where JS shines (we all have browsers). I think dedicating 10 minutes to ensure `docker run --rm -it -v $PWD:/srv python bash` should suffice, without digging into what it does.
As a beginner, I have no idea what docker is. This is one of the most frustrating parts of learning ANY language. The assumed knowledge and supposed "here's a quick start guide" actually starts on step 8. Don't assume the beginner knows what docker is. Don't assume the beginner knows what a shell is. I've tried to learn 3-4 languages or frameworks over the years, and I have only a vague idea of how to move between di…
> But I sold a business for 6 figures last year that was parimarily automation scripts in PHP. Figure that one out.
This is something I've tried to tell my teams over the years... There is no direct correlation between technical complexity and business value!
Some problems require complex engineering to be solved, but value and even durability do not come from technical excellence for 99.99% of businesses... Of course as a software developer I prefer to walk pristine halls of cutting edge software with perfect tests but the businesses I've sold/run have numbed me to the idea that fancy code makes the big bucks...
Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
#198WoW, such products can raise money.
Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 3. In other words, you're giving away like 5-10x the amount of free servers Koding did. If burning money didn't work for them, then how would burning it five times faster help you? Are you trying to make it up in volume or something? In Sep we spent $15k for all of our infrastructure cost and we made all of it back and then some with subscriptions. It's serverless, we only spend resources when people actually execu…
Thanks for the reply and transparency. I am actually a little surprised and refreshed that you were able to post infrastructure costs ($15k in Sept). I'm assuming this is on AWS Lambda? > Then they started selling premium plans for beefier servers, but no one bought them.. I still think this has validity, especially with high-tech products that have a free plan. How do you know how big the business can grow in terms…
> I'm assuming this is on AWS Lambda?
No we built our own. I started working on it in 2015 before much of the seeverless hype.
> How do you know how big the business can grow in terms of revenue when the vast majority of your users are free?
You don't. You have some plan and some people back you knowing that you're probably wrong about part or all of it. If you're careful and don't balloon the company (we're 6 people and hire very very slow) and get to default alive then you can have a near infinite runway to figure it out.
One rule of thumb is that if your developers are making money using your tools then they're more likely to pay. We all know devtools is a tough space but we're very driven, ambitious, yet conservative at the same time. Take every opportunity to cut burn and make revenue.
Re: Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
#200Python, 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…
On Linux it is all quite easy.
On Windows, just install WinPython or Thonny and you are good to go.