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CodePen 2.0

chriscoyier.net

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Re: CodePen 2.0

#51

https://jsfiddle.net/ used to be also very popular, I see that it is still available, but haven't used it in a while. Which other alternatives do people use now days?

As I said in the other comment: jsgist, precisely because it's so bare-bones. The data is stored either in a shareable URL parameter, or in a gist if you give it access to you GH account. Everything else is a minimal PWA in a static html file that makes hosting of it super-cheap, so I don't have to worry about greggman pulling it down.

Anyway, the main uses case I see for these playground sites are:

1) small hand-crafted replications of suspected browser CSS bugs or the like, and testing possible workarounds. That often involves sending them to other members in the team (because I use Linux and Android, two colleagues in the team use Windows, and two using Apple products)

2) trying out some idea for how to make a particular component. Which is effectively almost the same as above, since that needs to be tested across browsers.

So I don't need bells and whistles beyond a simple text editor with code folding. That might not apply to everyone else.

Also, the exact same line of thought applies to js benchmarking sites, which is why I use jsbenchit (which is jsgist but for benchmarks). It also seems to be one of the few benchmarking sites without spurious de-opts of JS code, or noise from GCs triggered by the website itself in the middle of a benchmarking run.

[0] https://jsgist.org/, https://github.com/greggman/jsgist/

[1] https://jsbenchit.org/, https://github.com/greggman/jsbenchit/

Re: CodePen 2.0

#52

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 imo ruined their product the moment they forced sign-up to view and explore, it also doesn't protect anything anyway seeing that they are all available as bulk archives on some forums.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, it's just not solvable... you can only mitigate anything hosted free will inevitably be abused by scammers, you need constant vigilance just to stay a step ahead

> it's just not solvable Watch out, good hackers find those words incredibly motivating.

even bad hackers know it's true

Re: CodePen 2.0

#55
post #3

> every pen is deployable It will be interesting seeing how this evolves. Any free hosting solution tends to spiral towards abuse at some point. Still trying to solve it for my own stuff. That said, I do wonder how valuable something like codepen is in the current meta. I really no longer look at code. I'm not referencing examples, I'm just prompting for what I want / inputting images as context.

> Any free hosting solution tends to spiral towards abuse at some point. Have github pages done this? Has cloudflare pages?

[dead]

Re: CodePen 2.0

#56

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.

> GitHub is incredibly complex

I'm reading this a day after GitHub had a day-long outage on Actions. https://www.githubstatus.com/uptime/br0l2tvcx85d

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