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Replit Mobile App

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Re: Replit Mobile App

#51

Post by pbiggar »

asadlionpk wrote: post #15
pbiggar wrote: 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?

Lol, thanks for asking! Yeah, I think we're making progress. There's a lot to do, and I feel it is getting done (see progress at https://darklang.com/changelog).

I don't believe we have product market fit yet, the plan goes like this:

- rebuild the technical foundations (DONE)

- fix a lot of the jankiness in the editor - make sure language is fully baked (coming soon)

- add a package manager/user management

I think the last step is where we'll start to see some product market fit.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#52

Post by Jtsummers »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #47
csmeyer wrote: post #30

I think it's great that they've identified cursor placement as one of the trickier aspects of coding on a phone. The joystick is a great idea, I found it a bit hard to use at first (kind of flies around the screen) but the little buttons are good for getting your cursor inside a string literal, for example. I'm excited to get my students trying this, many of them only have a school issued iPad. I'm also curious about…

How's it compare to the "space bar trick" on iOS? That thing usually seems to work to let me position the cursor how I want

Just tried it, you can use both within the text editor. I prefer the spacebar "trick". It was much smoother, I had trouble stopping at lines in the middle because it seemed too sensitive for up/down movement. The spacebar long press let me position the cursor anywhere within the text on the screen.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#53

Post by keeptrying »

That joystick control struck me as a great idea.

This really opens up coding to people who only have a phone - which is a large number of people in say Rural India.

One way of working I've constantly thinking about is using replit's as the unit of work.

Imagine finishing your work and sending the replit to someone else to review, run and then push to beta. No need for any setup on the reciever side or the QA side. If PM specs are also part of this environment, its very self contained and would be a great way for remote teams to work and helps avoid meetings.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#54

Post by tobr »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #47
csmeyer wrote: post #30

I think it's great that they've identified cursor placement as one of the trickier aspects of coding on a phone. The joystick is a great idea, I found it a bit hard to use at first (kind of flies around the screen) but the little buttons are good for getting your cursor inside a string literal, for example. I'm excited to get my students trying this, many of them only have a school issued iPad. I'm also curious about…

How's it compare to the "space bar trick" on iOS? That thing usually seems to work to let me position the cursor how I want

The joystick feels like a worse and redundant version of iOS’s built in spacebar-as-trackpad feature, but having buttons to step left and right is useful.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#55

Post by gmaster1440 »

I’m seeing a lot of responses clarifying that this app is designed for folks who either can’t afford to code from a computer (for various reasons outside of their control) or want to quickly prototype ideas or make changes to existing projects. To better illustrate my skepticism (and bias), I’d like to invoke an imperfect analogy to writing novels.

Imagine a mobile notes app that touts an impressive list of features and ergonomics that allows anyone to write the next novel from anywhere. You no longer need a computer or even an internet connection, just the $100 phone in your pocket and the desire to put words on (digital) paper. It’ll even figure out what you’re writing about and suggest novel plot devices and character arcs to add to your work in progress.

This sounds great on the surface, and it will definitely encourage more people to feel comfortable writing more often, which will no doubt lead to more literature being written as a result, much of which will benefit from the creative AI-injected prose.

The main issue as I see it (and I realize the analogy to writing novels is imperfect), is that the environment in which you’re writing, navigating, executing, and debugging code contributes greatly to one’s productivity and the quality of the final product. I can see the argument for being more of a playground for toy projects and ideas (much like a note-taking app), but I struggle to see this taking over as the primary tool by which technology companies are built.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#56

Post by xnx »

ramenator wrote: post #39
xnx wrote: 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 think the idea here is to enable people in places of the world that may not have laptops, where mobile phones are people's only computer. That's how I'm looking at this, but that's just my guess.

I agree. I think it's great. I was trying to point out that most(?) Android and iOS devices allow you to connect any cheap USB or Bluetooth keyboard.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#57

Post by haolez »

gmaster1440 wrote: post #55

I’m seeing a lot of responses clarifying that this app is designed for folks who either can’t afford to code from a computer (for various reasons outside of their control) or want to quickly prototype ideas or make changes to existing projects. To better illustrate my skepticism (and bias), I’d like to invoke an imperfect analogy to writing novels. Imagine a mobile notes app that touts an impressive list of features…

The only issue that I see is that it's a proprietary solution that no one knows where it's going to be in the future.

I'm not trying to be harsh on Replit. They are just starting, after all, and my point above can be addressed in due time if they feel like doing so.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#58

Post by orliesaurus »

This app makes sense when:

- You're just solving "seriousplay" i.e. code challenges

- Most of the code is boilerplate and you can inject a couple of variables here and there and press a button to deploy

- Quickly fix something that can be done on the fly while you're sitting in the underground (typos, small PRs)

- Any future where AI takes over and starts suggesting the code you want to write and literally takes your hand and guides you, so you write better code faster.

Re: Replit Mobile App

#60

Post by Jtsummers »

haolez wrote: post #57
gmaster1440 wrote: post #55

I’m seeing a lot of responses clarifying that this app is designed for folks who either can’t afford to code from a computer (for various reasons outside of their control) or want to quickly prototype ideas or make changes to existing projects. To better illustrate my skepticism (and bias), I’d like to invoke an imperfect analogy to writing novels. Imagine a mobile notes app that touts an impressive list of features…

The only issue that I see is that it's a proprietary solution that no one knows where it's going to be in the future. I'm not trying to be harsh on Replit. They are just starting, after all, and my point above can be addressed in due time if they feel like doing so.

The languages are all bog standard and you can configure the environment for execution via Nix. Not on the mobile (or I've missed it) but via the website you can connect projects to git repos. So none of the data is locked in in any way.

In principle, this means you should be able to clone any project and run it on your own machine(s) with little effort if you're aware of how to set up nix and git in the first place.

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