Live data from Hacker News

Why can't I write code inside my browser?

tomcritchlow.com

1–10 of 624 posts

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#2
You can though. Chrome dev tools can edit local files. It's basically an IDE. You can easily build a single page application. You can even do some server-like stuff purely in the browser now with service workers. There are also plenty of online IDEs available spanning the gamut from toys to serious work environments.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#5
I'm curious if the author has heard of sites like:

* https://repl.it/

* https://jsfiddle.net/

I didn't see anything like that mentioned in the article, but I think that you can easily write code inside your browser today.

Also, web browsers are already extremely heavy and complicated. That complexity is convenient for end users, but it also has costs, like making it very difficult and expensive to create a new competitive browser. Do we really need to add another standard to turn them into offline IDEs on top of everything else?

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#8
I take the "wtf is user/local/bin in $path?" to be a question from a non-tech person that is interested in learning to code. I can't be sure though since the author stated he has failed to install Node js.

Should Chrome have Node JS loaded into it during install? I don't do web-dev so my answer is no.

Should there be browsers made for those learning web-dev that come with these? By all means, sure. Go nuts.

This also might sound elitist but I would expect the kind of person that takes an interest in coding to be able to google what $PATH is or hell take the complete instruction "add to $PATH"

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#10

>Here’s my pitch: build a browser that comes pre-installed with node.js, an IDE and a simple runtime environment. https://glitch.com/ https://runkit.com/home https://codepen.io/ https://github.com/features/codespaces Maybe you don't need new browser ? Maybe ?

Also worth mentioning https://codesandbox.io/ especially for those familiar with VSCode.
Post reply on HN