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Replit Mobile App

blog.replit.com

11–20 of 212 posts

Re: Replit Mobile App

#11
post #9

Is there any hope for a native desktop app?

I'm all for native desktop apps, but do you have a particular reason for this over what you can do through the web-browser? It works very well as is, and if it were to run as a desktop app, it would basically do what the web version does but in a desktop form-factor. Which I suspect is not what you want, but you want some features that are missing in the web app, right? if so, what are those?

Re: Replit Mobile App

#12
post #4

Presently on iOS it appears this is an iPhone app that doesn't scale to iPad screen dimensions, even when expanded. It's using between a third and a half of the available viewport in landscape orientation. That said, it appears to work pretty well in side-by-side mode, concurrently with another app, but it still uses about half the available viewport in this mode. I expect this will get addressed PDQ.

I think their main focus is allowing people to code who only have a mobile phone, so my guess is iPad is a lower priority (because most people with iPads have full size computers they can use instead).

Re: Replit Mobile App

#14
This is one of those examples for me where the idea is far superior than the implementation. The idea of anyone being able to quickly write code from anywhere, as the main promo video suggests, is fantastic and greatly motivating. In practice, coding on an iPhone (even with an innovative new joystick), is gimmicky at best, given how deeply ingrained good ergonomics are in the coding process.

I struggle to see this as one of those "bicycle for the mind" products, hope I'm wrong!

Re: Replit Mobile App

#15
post #6

Very very cool. Have been thinking about this for Darklang for a while. One thing that's changed since I started thinking about it is how big a deal AI assist is. Originally, I thought a structured editor would be essential, but now while it's helpful, I think AI assist can do like 90% the benefit you get.

is darklang going anywhere? It's a good tech demo but is there a product market fit yet?

Re: Replit Mobile App

#16
Very cool and exciting Kudos

A very annoying bug is that the first chatacter is a capital letter in mobile. And parentheses are not suggested along with brackets and curly braces.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#17
On a related note, it would be cool if there was a "coding mode" mobile keyboard option. We have built-in keyboards for phone number and formatters for particular things.

It would be cool to have a built-in coding keyboard that adapts to the language being written via plugins, etc.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#18

This is one of those examples for me where the idea is far superior than the implementation. The idea of anyone being able to quickly write code from anywhere, as the main promo video suggests, is fantastic and greatly motivating. In practice, coding on an iPhone (even with an innovative new joystick), is gimmicky at best, given how deeply ingrained good ergonomics are in the coding process. I struggle to see this as…

This is mostly aimed at people who don't have the luxury of coding from a computer.

See this tweet from the CEO: https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1582754947480793093

> We partnered with @TeamMindjoy to test the app by teaching girls how to code in a South African township and we made a video about it. During this time the wifi was super unstable and the few laptops they had were unusable, but kids continued to code on $100 Android phones!

Re: Replit Mobile App

#19
post #4

Presently on iOS it appears this is an iPhone app that doesn't scale to iPad screen dimensions, even when expanded. It's using between a third and a half of the available viewport in landscape orientation. That said, it appears to work pretty well in side-by-side mode, concurrently with another app, but it still uses about half the available viewport in this mode. I expect this will get addressed PDQ.

I think their main focus is allowing people to code who only have a mobile phone, so my guess is iPad is a lower priority (because most people with iPads have full size computers they can use instead).

iPad users also have access to the desktop version of their site

Re: Replit Mobile App

#20

This is one of those examples for me where the idea is far superior than the implementation. The idea of anyone being able to quickly write code from anywhere, as the main promo video suggests, is fantastic and greatly motivating. In practice, coding on an iPhone (even with an innovative new joystick), is gimmicky at best, given how deeply ingrained good ergonomics are in the coding process. I struggle to see this as…

For folks in the global south who might own a smartphone but not a macbook, a native mobile dev env is god-sent. For others, the Replit mobile app is but a start, even if it looks like a toy, and can help in building only toy apps, and deal only with toy codebases. This is a start in the right direction.

Besides, in the future, more advances in AI might mean, folks only need to key in prompts.

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