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Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

repl.it

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Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#41

Post by jonfw »

simias wrote: post #7
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #2

> We built Repl.it to make it easy to explore and learn languages and programming paradigms. We were, however, surprised by how slow-moving the programming language space seems to be. Given how fast software is growing, shouldn’t we see more innovation in programming languages? Isn't this like saying: "the construction industry is growing fast, how come there are no new hammers being invented every other week?" I, to…

I've been coding for almost 20 years now, I definitely saw many changes in that time. Languages like Java and C# became huge, scripting languages like Python or JavaScript became not-just-scripting-languages. C went from "The English of programing languages" to "The Latin of programing languages". Then you have a newer generation starting to take over some niches with the likes of Go, Rust and a few others. If anythi…

I'm not sure that it needs to be changed. Math has been represented in a similar fashion for a very very long time.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#42

Post by rainbow-road »

the_af wrote: post #32
simias wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been coding for almost 20 years now, I definitely saw many changes in that time. Languages like Java and C# became huge, scripting languages like Python or JavaScript became not-just-scripting-languages. C went from "The English of programing languages" to "The Latin of programing languages". Then you have a newer generation starting to take over some niches with the likes of Go, Rust and a few others. If anythi…

> We have high res monitors with incredible graphical capabilities but we still mostly just represent code as flat text files I think the key issue here is that flat text files remain an universal standard, easily handled with commodity tools and editors, often bundled with the OS itself. Once in a while someone wants to revolutionize code representation (like Light Table, which you mentioned). "What if we represente…

Well one alternative representation really took off, that one where code is is a dataflow graph, whose nodes are all one-liners on a massive grid. I wonder what led to its success, where so many other interesting ideas have failed?

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#43

Post by saagarjha »

simias wrote: post #40
saagarjha wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> C went from "The English of programing languages" to "The Latin of programing languages". There's still a huge amount of development being done in C. > If anything what bothers me is not the lack of innovation in programming languages per se but the relative lack of innovation in program representation. One of the benefits of using text is you get a huge number of tools that work with it, without the things that ar…

>There's still a huge amount of development being done in C. I know, I do some of it! My point was more that 20 years ago in my experience you couldn't call yourself a coder if you didn't know some C. Nowadays I find that most novel coders know about it but can't really write it "fluently". Many people still know, study and even use it, but it's not quite as ubiquitous as it once was.

I think it's more like cursive: some people still use it, but fewer than before.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#44

Post by simias »

the_af wrote: post #32
simias wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been coding for almost 20 years now, I definitely saw many changes in that time. Languages like Java and C# became huge, scripting languages like Python or JavaScript became not-just-scripting-languages. C went from "The English of programing languages" to "The Latin of programing languages". Then you have a newer generation starting to take over some niches with the likes of Go, Rust and a few others. If anythi…

> We have high res monitors with incredible graphical capabilities but we still mostly just represent code as flat text files I think the key issue here is that flat text files remain an universal standard, easily handled with commodity tools and editors, often bundled with the OS itself. Once in a while someone wants to revolutionize code representation (like Light Table, which you mentioned). "What if we represente…

I agree completely, hence why I want a big player that can throw their weight around to try something. You'd basically have to create a whole ecosystem around your fancy new tool.

It's a very tall order for some lone coder in their basement, but it's called Monday for Google.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#45

Post by amasad »

juped wrote: post #39
amasad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Repl.it is an amazing idea, but it's infuriating to use. No syntax highlighting in the REPL, laaaaaag everywhere, hardly any version control… It's useful for performing a 30 second Python interaction on machines without Python installed, but that 30 seconds becomes 3 minutes because Repl.it is so clunky. We've improved performance a lot and we'll keep working on it. I just timed it and it took me 5 seconds to start…

I'm more interested in your response to the paragraph you conspicuously skipped: > Anyway, version control is there now, and you can edit existing Git repos! Except it's actually GitHub, not Git, so I can't use it for any of my existing projects, including my programming language…

Repl.it is set of automation and UI tools that makes it easy for beginners learn to code and for developers to test or prototype projects.

Any feature that's implemented in the UI is implemented as abstraction over things you can do by opening the shell. Because we are a small team that prizes simplicity over completeness, and because GH is the most popular we just made that the default.

But you can open the shell (command/cntrl+k and type "shell") then use git to your hearts desire :)

We'll probably add native GitLab or whatever others want in the future. You can always leave feedback here and tell us what you want: https://repl.it/feedback

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#46

Post by BaraBatman »

amasad wrote: post #28
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repl.it is an amazing idea, but it's infuriating to use. No syntax highlighting in the REPL, laaaaaag everywhere, hardly any version control… It's useful for performing a 30 second Python interaction on machines without Python installed, but that 30 seconds becomes 3 minutes because Repl.it is so clunky. I tried to log in to check whether things had improved, but apparently I need Google's permission to do so now? An…

> Repl.it is an amazing idea, but it's infuriating to use. No syntax highlighting in the REPL, laaaaaag everywhere, hardly any version control… It's useful for performing a 30 second Python interaction on machines without Python installed, but that 30 seconds becomes 3 minutes because Repl.it is so clunky. We've improved performance a lot and we'll keep working on it. I just timed it and it took me 5 seconds to start…

Do you have any internships program?

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#47

Post by amasad »

BaraBatman wrote: post #46
amasad wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Repl.it is an amazing idea, but it's infuriating to use. No syntax highlighting in the REPL, laaaaaag everywhere, hardly any version control… It's useful for performing a 30 second Python interaction on machines without Python installed, but that 30 seconds becomes 3 minutes because Repl.it is so clunky. We've improved performance a lot and we'll keep working on it. I just timed it and it took me 5 seconds to start…

Do you have any internships program?

Yes, interns apply and we do hire them (despite not listing any intern-specific roles).

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#48

Post by searchableguy »

compscistd wrote: post #6
azhenley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my extremely biased view from HN, Reddit, and Twitter, it seems like nearly every dev has their own toy language project. The number of language announcements and compiler tutorials on HN is astronomical, several of which are from myself.

But it’s not __approachable__, at least not to me. Seems like survivorship bias to point to nearly every dev with a toy language project. I might feel similarly if I finish nand2tetris

I think that's internet in general. HN has 30 slots which change upto 4-6 times a day. That's 120 slots and assuming only 5% of them are show HN: new programming language. It's vastly smaller than the number of software engineers that are produced every year.

That's in millions.

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#49

Post by amasad »

simias wrote: post #7
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #2

> We built Repl.it to make it easy to explore and learn languages and programming paradigms. We were, however, surprised by how slow-moving the programming language space seems to be. Given how fast software is growing, shouldn’t we see more innovation in programming languages? Isn't this like saying: "the construction industry is growing fast, how come there are no new hammers being invented every other week?" I, to…

I've been coding for almost 20 years now, I definitely saw many changes in that time. Languages like Java and C# became huge, scripting languages like Python or JavaScript became not-just-scripting-languages. C went from "The English of programing languages" to "The Latin of programing languages". Then you have a newer generation starting to take over some niches with the likes of Go, Rust and a few others. If anythi…

We have some experiments not so much in changing textual representation but more in visual tools to make use of said high res monitors. Nothing concrete to share publicly yet.

I also wrote recently about how GPT-3 being so good with little training at code generation might make for interesting advancement in programming environments: https://blog.repl.it/codingai

Re: Kicking Off the Repl.it Programming Language Jam

#50

Post by Avshalom »

rainbow-road wrote: post #42
the_af wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have high res monitors with incredible graphical capabilities but we still mostly just represent code as flat text files I think the key issue here is that flat text files remain an universal standard, easily handled with commodity tools and editors, often bundled with the OS itself. Once in a while someone wants to revolutionize code representation (like Light Table, which you mentioned). "What if we represente…

Well one alternative representation really took off, that one where code is is a dataflow graph, whose nodes are all one-liners on a massive grid. I wonder what led to its success, where so many other interesting ideas have failed?

Like LabVIEW the spreadsheet paradigm took off in limited domain and became progressively more maligned as it got used for everything else.
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