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Replit Mobile App

blog.replit.com

111–120 of 212 posts

Re: Replit Mobile App

#112
post #90

This is the founder who turned into a psycho tyrant (I forget his exact words, but something to the effect of, "we're not the same small company, I have money and lawyers now") on an ex-employee for an innocent side project, threatened to sue him, etc, until it went viral and then backpedaled and offered some non-apology. I remember stuff like that and will never use this company's tools, which is a shame because I w…

damn that thread really got 4k internet points >. i dont know if that guy ever got his act straight but im still rooting for their company, especially for third-world countries where students only got mobile devices and got no access to computers and laptops. it was horrible seeing students not being able to do hands-on activities during the recent covid years. let alone other problems like dysfunctional / laggy / bu…

Amjad copy 5 of 5 ideas of our 10 years development startup for mobile coding from Ukraine where World War right now. See also my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33267464

Re: Replit Mobile App

#113
post #26

I'm bullish on this because mobile (and web) development is ridiculously overcomplicated to a beginner. I think it's a common misconception that coding/logic is difficult. I find the development setup and deployment to be much more complicated. As evidence, take a look at the impressive workarounds that citizen developers use to make things work in an easy environment like Excel. A keyboard and mouse probably solve m…

I'm, generally, not bullish: But only because the predominating "what value do products like this bring" arguments from those who are bullish is some variation of "it's great for learning/beginners". That's simply no way to build a venture business (and replit has received... $105M).

Higher layers of abstraction can make sense; no code tools can be killer; but that isn't really replit. Replit is just a weird product on the side of the abstraction spectrum which requires its devs to understand a large chunk of what would be required to get, say, a nodejs server running on, say, Heroku.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#114
I want a token based keyboard with the following properties

Language and syntax awareness. When I’m writing JavaScript - it should provide keys for ‘if’ ‘each’ ‘function’ etc.

When I have unbalanced parens, braces etc, it should tell me how many levels deep I am and what context I’m in.

Instead of me naming variables it should generate random names and let me declare with a single tap. Provide easy refactoring tools so I can rename them later.

On mobile I want to manipulate symbols or the AST directly rather than rely on text input.

Take advantage of a keyboard that can display infinite variation and change on the fly.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#115
As a teacher the basic Replit stuff is great, but their class management stuff is atrocious and unintuitive. For example, under one class I created 9 units with a number of challenges under each unit. You copy that to a new class (Team is what they call it) and all sections disappear). Then if you want to reorganize, even if there are sections, you have to drag and drop, scrolling up or down the page and repeating the drag to get it to the right section.

Another thing is when you organize sections there is no drag and drop, but arrows moving boxes up and down.

I've sent in dozens of issues for various bugs and annoyances, and even dug into the js to point out how to fix things, but after nearly 2 years they are still there.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#116

This is the founder who turned into a psycho tyrant (I forget his exact words, but something to the effect of, "we're not the same small company, I have money and lawyers now") on an ex-employee for an innocent side project, threatened to sue him, etc, until it went viral and then backpedaled and offered some non-apology. I remember stuff like that and will never use this company's tools, which is a shame because I w…

I have a similar story about DigitalOcean from when I published the fact that they were intentionally leaking customer data cross-account because they didn’t understand thin/sparse provisioning of block devices.

One time I was interviewing somewhere and the interviewer spent the whole call super unprofessionally trashing a close personal friend of mine (also prominent in the industry) when I had mentioned working with them on some research.

I think everyone paying attention in this industry has a list of companies and people we will never work with.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#117
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

damn that thread really got 4k internet points >. i dont know if that guy ever got his act straight but im still rooting for their company, especially for third-world countries where students only got mobile devices and got no access to computers and laptops. it was horrible seeing students not being able to do hands-on activities during the recent covid years. let alone other problems like dysfunctional / laggy / bu…

Amjad copy 5 of 5 ideas of our 10 years development startup for mobile coding from Ukraine where World War right now. See also my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33267464

Copying ideas is only a threat if you think the copying party is:

1) better at executing than you

and

2) understands the market better than you

It is generally accepted wisdom that if someone copies you, you are doing something right and should focus on fundamentals and shipping/customers.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company is more than the personality of its CEO. Gates, Zuckerburg or Elon's personal faults shouldn't override the work and mission of thousands others.

I would argue the exact opposite. Companies like Amazon and SpaceX have shaped their entire company culture using the values of their respective CEOs.

It depends on the CEO. I think SpaceX reflects more on the culture of the COO than the CEO; the company does not operate like the CEO does.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#119
post #74

I read on another comment by a high school teacher that many of their students write essays on mobile. It seems that the younger generations are mobile-digital native, as opposed to desktop-digital native. I don't expect desktop apps to be completely replaced by mobile apps, but the migration of some specific use cases is interesting to watch: - Maps and navigation - Email / instant messaging - Photo editing - Video…

Is it because they are "mobile-digital native" or is it because what they are being asked to write is closer to texting than a normal high school level English paper? I've seen what community college teachers are having kids submit for papers. While they do definitely look like they could have been written on a phone, it isn't because they have some type of skill in writing on mobile.

I think the idea of the quality of text written being related to the screen size of the device on which it was input is an old person anachronism.

This would be like saying novel quality written in a word processor would be inferior to typing on a typewriter, or handwritten.

I write and edit almost all my HN comments on a phone, and I think they’re identical in quality and tone to what I’d write on a computer.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#120
post #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.

There are such things e.g., Pythonista 3rd party keyboard on iOS (android is even more likely to support custom keyboards).
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