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CodePen 2.0

chriscoyier.net

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Re: CodePen 2.0

#31

Post by OuterVale »

danielvaughn wrote: post #2

I've been a CodePen user since the very early days. Have always loved the platform. I hate to be negative, but I'm honestly not a fan of the 2.0 release. What I loved about CodePen was just being able to try out something really quick and simple. But the new interface makes me feel more like I'm building a website inside of a website.

This is something they're certainly aware of as they kept the old style available (https://codepen.io/pen) and created a tutorial on how to make 2.0 work like the old version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMxXwupwURQ

Re: CodePen 2.0

#32

Post by zeroq »

danielvaughn wrote: post #2

I've been a CodePen user since the very early days. Have always loved the platform. I hate to be negative, but I'm honestly not a fan of the 2.0 release. What I loved about CodePen was just being able to try out something really quick and simple. But the new interface makes me feel more like I'm building a website inside of a website.

A textbook definition of "feature creep".

I have absolutely no idea if CodePen is feeling pressure from their shareholders or want to cook before the IPO, but I often wonder why Spotify needs 3,000 [1] developers working full time on a streaming app.

4 weeks ago there was a thread about Spotify making over 4,000 production releases a day (or 10 in 10 minutes in another comment in that thread).

WinAmp has been dead for centuries but it's still a perfectly valid player, foobar is being developed by a single dev. Of course I do understand that these people have a lot of auxilary tasks at hand, and "music player" is just a small component of the whole system, but still, it feels bizarre to think you need such an army to maintain a working app.

I love cool features as much as the next guy, but I'm also a fan of coherent products that knows their identity.

[1] the number might be inaccurate but that's beside the point

Re: CodePen 2.0

#33

Post by bubblebeard »

gkoberger wrote: post #8
danielvaughn wrote: post #2

I've been a CodePen user since the very early days. Have always loved the platform. I hate to be negative, but I'm honestly not a fan of the 2.0 release. What I loved about CodePen was just being able to try out something really quick and simple. But the new interface makes me feel more like I'm building a website inside of a website.

That's the hard part about tools like this. They're too simple to be used for anything important, and as soon as the creator follows that path you end up in a situation where it's too simple for anything complex and too complex for anything simple. Amazing platforms like Glitch ran into this problem. (Some did pull it off! Like how Vercel built a kingdom out of `now`.)

The more complex the more fragile. The simpler the solution the more robust. This, I feel, is an overall truth to software development. And simpler solutions, as far as I know, are usually the more useful ones.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#34

Post by gkoberger »

bubblebeard wrote: post #33
gkoberger wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the hard part about tools like this. They're too simple to be used for anything important, and as soon as the creator follows that path you end up in a situation where it's too simple for anything complex and too complex for anything simple. Amazing platforms like Glitch ran into this problem. (Some did pull it off! Like how Vercel built a kingdom out of `now`.)

The more complex the more fragile. The simpler the solution the more robust. This, I feel, is an overall truth to software development. And simpler solutions, as far as I know, are usually the more useful ones.

Not necessarily! Linux is incredibly complex. AWS is incredibly complex. Next is incredibly complex. GitHub is incredibly complex.

We need simple tools and we need complex tools. It's the middle ground that's hard to navigate.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#35

Post by ianberdin »

Congratulations, Chris! I’ve always been competing with you, and many users came to Playcode from Codepen. In fact, I even offered to buy playcode.io about 9-10 years ago, but you didn’t respond and 1-2 months later you released a copy product named Codepen Projects.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#36

Post by albedoa »

zeroq wrote: post #32
danielvaughn wrote: post #2

I've been a CodePen user since the very early days. Have always loved the platform. I hate to be negative, but I'm honestly not a fan of the 2.0 release. What I loved about CodePen was just being able to try out something really quick and simple. But the new interface makes me feel more like I'm building a website inside of a website.

A textbook definition of "feature creep". I have absolutely no idea if CodePen is feeling pressure from their shareholders or want to cook before the IPO, but I often wonder why Spotify needs 3,000 [1] developers working full time on a streaming app. 4 weeks ago there was a thread about Spotify making over 4,000 production releases a day (or 10 in 10 minutes in another comment in that thread). WinAmp has been dead fo…

> or want to cook before the IPO

What IPO is that?

Re: CodePen 2.0

#37

Post by amelius »

danielvaughn wrote: post #2

I've been a CodePen user since the very early days. Have always loved the platform. I hate to be negative, but I'm honestly not a fan of the 2.0 release. What I loved about CodePen was just being able to try out something really quick and simple. But the new interface makes me feel more like I'm building a website inside of a website.

Codepen was indeed nice for quick and simple experiments, but LLMs take away the need for that.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#38

Post by filearts »

danielvaughn wrote: post #2

I've been a CodePen user since the very early days. Have always loved the platform. I hate to be negative, but I'm honestly not a fan of the 2.0 release. What I loved about CodePen was just being able to try out something really quick and simple. But the new interface makes me feel more like I'm building a website inside of a website.

If you want to go back to a simpler editing experience, https://plnkr.co/edit/?preview might just do the trick for you. Hasn't changed in literally years. Nowhere near the polish or flair you see from legends like Chris Coyier though.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#39

Post by malfist »

gkoberger wrote: post #34
bubblebeard wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more complex the more fragile. The simpler the solution the more robust. This, I feel, is an overall truth to software development. And simpler solutions, as far as I know, are usually the more useful ones.

Not necessarily! Linux is incredibly complex. AWS is incredibly complex. Next is incredibly complex. GitHub is incredibly complex. We need simple tools and we need complex tools. It's the middle ground that's hard to navigate.

When we're lucky, that complexity is mostly locked behind abstraction and you only occasionally have to care. Of course those you usually discover at 3AM on a Saturday

Re: CodePen 2.0

#40

Post by GSimon »

gottagocode wrote: post #13

Used to love this site back when you could see what other craftsmen were actually creating by hand.

Same, years ago they did an update when you could still see some pens featured on the homepage but the UX was less fun to browse through. Now it seems there are no featured pens on the homepage, so you can't just explore pens aimlessly.
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