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Repl.it Multiplayer

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Re: Repl.it Multiplayer

#111

Post by lgessler »

hantusk wrote: post #98
lgessler wrote: post #42

Really cool, Repl.it is the best online bite-sized programming platform I've ever used. The breadth of languages offered is surprising (Brainfuck and Scheme?!), and things I would have thought wouldn't be supported were supported. I say this in spite of an excruciating experience I had a few weeks ago where I led a Python for absolute beginners day-long workshop. I had tried Repl.it before writing the course material…

I hope. If you need redundancy, I would consider setting a parallel setup with glitch.com which to my surprise also supports python and is battle-tested. No affiliation, just a happy user (of both repl.it and glitch)

neat! I didn't know there were so many options in this space!

Re: Repl.it Multiplayer

#113

Post by carls »

lgessler wrote: post #109
piokoch wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"letting me spare the class the possibly excruciating and definitely not fun experience of downloading and configuring Python and an IDE" Aren't you afraid that class participants will have a hard time configuring later Python and IDE by themselves? Wouldn't be beneficial for them to spend some time setting up their own environment during the class? BTW I am curious in what way installing Anaconda and starting Jupyth…

Nick Thieberger has a nice comic[1] which I think captures my sentiment about this. I think techies like us severely underestimate how much of a turnoff it can be to begin someone's computer programming experience by making them schlep through an arduous installation and configuration process. You can promise them "really, we'll just get this right once, and it'll all be over", but that doesn't change the fact that t…

I'm a high school computer science teacher (who has also taught middle and elementary school students) and would like to absolutely echo this.

As folks who are fairly proficient in programming, our scales for what constitutes as a "difficult task" can be wildly different from beginners to the field. They haven't built the knowledge, experience and mental representations to accurately determine whether something is hard or easy (case in point: my 9th graders will often propose final projects that would take a group of seasoned engineers months to complete).

After CS classes in college and working in the field, I kinda forgot about the initial setup barriers that I first encountered (and was much more patient to battle through); but after just teaching a single class of middle school students (a) not knowing how to properly install software and (b) as a result, getting into the state of "This is boring ... so I'm going to entertain myself by socializing, distracting my friends, or goofing around" I quickly realized how important it was for these kids' first experience with programming to be painless ... otherwise they would also make my life as a teacher a difficult one.

Re: Repl.it Multiplayer

#114

Post by orliesaurus »

hayaodeh2 wrote: post #49
orliesaurus wrote: post #39

Been using repl.it for so many years, glad to see it's finally getting the attention (and new features) it deserves!

Thank you for your support and kind words. We value our users and early adopters. I would love to learn more about how you've been using Repl.it and why? Please feel free to email me at haya@repl.it

Mostly just running code on the fly, most times to show small snippets of code to people over the shoulder. Nothing glorious

Re: Repl.it Multiplayer

#115

Post by anderspitman »

Very cool. This looks almost perfect for having a shared environment for teaching my nephews how to make browser games. Only issue is it appears the multiplayer sessions are not persistent? ie what I really need is a shared project where different participants can log in and hack on it as they have time, but also pair if someone runs into a problem and needs realtime help fixing it. I think cloud9 works this way. @amasad Any chance of repl.it supporting this case in the future (or maybe it alread y does and I'm missing it)? This is something I would gladly pay a subscription for.

Re: Repl.it Multiplayer

#116

Post by jakobegger »

brownbat wrote: post #99
piokoch wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"letting me spare the class the possibly excruciating and definitely not fun experience of downloading and configuring Python and an IDE" Aren't you afraid that class participants will have a hard time configuring later Python and IDE by themselves? Wouldn't be beneficial for them to spend some time setting up their own environment during the class? BTW I am curious in what way installing Anaconda and starting Jupyth…

For absolute beginners, I'd even prefer something like this: 1. Hit install on Python and accept the defaults. 2. Install a simple text editor with syntax highlighting. 3. Open a file right on your desktop and type two commands in it and press F5 or something to run it. Anaconda and Jupyter are great tools, but even they add complexity you don't need when teaching absolute beginners how accessible this can be. Here's…

This is how I use Python. I'm not very proficient in Python, but it's amazing how quickly I can build simple services with it, despite it being a language I only use occasionally.

There's so much stuff included in the basic installation from python.org. And it all just works.

The only thing missing from the basic installation is psycopg2 for talking with PostgreSQL.

Re: Repl.it Multiplayer

#117

Post by brownbat »

lgessler wrote: post #110
brownbat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For absolute beginners, I'd even prefer something like this: 1. Hit install on Python and accept the defaults. 2. Install a simple text editor with syntax highlighting. 3. Open a file right on your desktop and type two commands in it and press F5 or something to run it. Anaconda and Jupyter are great tools, but even they add complexity you don't need when teaching absolute beginners how accessible this can be. Here's…

Yes, that might be what I would do if I did the workshop again. I still like Repl.it because I think the distinction between the REPL and the file/editor is much easier to grasp there than with IDLE and IDLE's REPL, but running code locally is necessarily going to be more reliable than running code on a remote platform.

Repl.it is a pretty neat solution too, don't get me wrong.

And IDLE has always left me unimpressed relative to the terminal... but using Unicode on Windows, suddenly code pages get involved, which no one should ever have to know. There is a long series of subtle, unpleasant tradeoffs.

Writing short Python scripts when I traveled with a Chromebook was messy, I leaned on repl.it as one option... It was super easy to dive in.

Re: Repl.it Multiplayer

#118

Post by sivakon »

aloisdg wrote: post #91
lgessler wrote: post #42

Really cool, Repl.it is the best online bite-sized programming platform I've ever used. The breadth of languages offered is surprising (Brainfuck and Scheme?!), and things I would have thought wouldn't be supported were supported. I say this in spite of an excruciating experience I had a few weeks ago where I led a Python for absolute beginners day-long workshop. I had tried Repl.it before writing the course material…

> The breadth of languages offered is surprising Do you know Try it online? Try it online: https://tio.run/ code: https://github.com/TryItOnline

Have you tried https://wandbox.org?

It’s consistent and Github login saves your code in one page.

Re: Repl.it Multiplayer

#119

Post by arendtio »

arendtio wrote: post #95

I wish there was a service which allowed collaborative code editing without registration/an account. Some years ago I used Gobby/Sobby [0] for such use-cases but using a website would make the whole thing much easier than having to install some software first. [0]: https://gobby.github.io/

I just created a repl.it account and tried the multiplayer feature. In fact, not every participant requires an account, just the host. So not as bad I as I expected and kinda reasonable. I am confident I will try that feature with some friends in the future.

Re: Repl.it Multiplayer

#120

Post by yomly »

sytse wrote: post #58

I wonder what technology Repl.it is using for the multiplayer. VS code has a live coding plugin, is this what is used? Disclosure: I’m the CEO of GitLab and we’re looking at live coding ourselves as well.

Did you see this Clojure Conj talk about party repl?

https://youtu.be/AJING0Vigpg

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