Coding on a touch screen?
My Kinesis Advantage is smiling at me with confidence.:)
Replit Mobile App
181–190 of 212 posts
Re: Replit Mobile App
#182I 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…
We had this with the Spectrum in the 80s. Somehow someone decided it was not a good idea. Wonder why.
Re: Replit Mobile App
#183I'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…
Just my take, but the more people who can “code”, even at a basic level, the better. Because then they intuit that the challenging part in not the words but the logic.
Learn to code then be an “excel jockey”. Those folks create just as much value with less of the identity bullshit.
Edit - sorry if this sounded confrontational. That wasn’t my intent - I just learned that I feel passionately about this topic.
Re: Replit Mobile App
#184I 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…
We had this with the Spectrum in the 80s. Somehow someone decided it was not a good idea. Wonder why.
Spectrum had numerous input modes which made the typing experience complicated and prone to errors. On a mobile device, you can just add another key row on top of existing keyboard without incurring complexity. La Terminal is a great example.
Re: Replit Mobile App
#185I'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 bullish on this because my children prefer phones and iPads for almost everything that I would prefer a computer for. They have ten times more experience with computing devices than I did when I was their age, and almost all of that experience is via touch screens. Keyboard and mouse are unnatural for them, but when it comes to navigating mobile UIs, they are perhaps already faster and more fluent than I am.
Re: Replit Mobile App
#186I'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 find the development setup and deployment to be much more complicated My understanding is that is the problem repl.it is trying to solve. In a sentence: think about your code and not your environment. My curmudgeonly self thinks that there are deeper problems and externalities that programming on a phone/tablet or in the web only exasperate. Computer literacy is shockingly poor among the incoming generation of pe…
I believe there are enormous amounts of resources which enable people to self-tech the basics of coding. I partially agree -- but it's not an absense of possibility, it's absense of motivation. I think it's exactly because modern systems are opaque to a beginner
Re: Replit Mobile App
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
We had this with the Spectrum in the 80s. Somehow someone decided it was not a good idea. Wonder why.
Spectrum had numerous input modes which made the typing experience complicated and prone to errors. On a mobile device, you can just add another key row on top of existing keyboard without incurring complexity. La Terminal is a great example.
Yes, of course, I was simply saying that... it should not be too complicated in our era. Thanks.
Re: Replit Mobile App
#188Is this the same Replit who used legal threats to shut down an open source project made by an intern after they left[1]? I don't know how anyone can in good conscience support this company. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195
This is like trying to cancel a homeowner because they spoke rudely to a home invader. He was out of line, for sure, but he was not wrong, from what I read about the situation. I’ve seen replit used in classroom settings both before and after that kerfuffle and it’s an extraordinary product., imho. If I were a teacher, I’d probably use it.
You’re comparing an open source repo to a home invasion? My god man, you must realize that those aren’t even close to the same magnitude. Maybe more like walking within 10 miles of a house - but that house is actually a heavily fortified castle with trebuchets.
Re: Replit Mobile App
#189Hello, I'm Viktor from Ukraine, the author and founder of the Animation CPU mobile coding platform, which I've been developing for 10+5 years. 2 years ago during COVID-19, 2014-2022 war in Ukraine and financial pressure, I wrote to Amjad with my ideas about mobile coding and was looking for support. He was introduced as a judge in the Pioneer.app remote accelerator and as an investor, and I had reason to trust him. A…
Very interesting, what specifically was copied?
Re: Replit Mobile App
#190Did anyone else learn to code on a TI-83+? Although I doubt I'd use this in a professional setting, making coding accessible to more people sounds great to me.
I ended up with a TI-86 as the cheaper ones were sold out at the time of the school supply rush. It's the only reason I passed my math classes in high school. Luckily I kept my mouth shut so the teachers didn't know. Eventually they implemented a factory reset procedure on test day. You would bring up the reset menu and the teacher would walk around and initiate it and confirm it.
Today (at least in France) programmable calculators have an Exam mode. When it is enabled, all memory is locked and you need a computer to disable it.