I teach an AP CS A class at a Bay Area school. In previous years, the class would have students write and run Java on their own computers.<p>This year, given the remote nature, the class has completely transitioned to using Repl.it. We publish assignments and projects on it (and have also tried syncing with Github classroom to give more in-depth comments for each commit), and also demonstrate new topics by pulling up a blank Repl.it and live coding.<p>While there have been hiccups and days when the service crashed during class, it has for the most part exceeded our (my co-teachers and I) expectations.<p>I appreciate that they have a vibrant community. There seem to be lots of tinkerers/hackers on the platform who are doing weird, interesting things (I saw a Python implementation of a text-based Among Us game the other day [1] and a turkey translator [2]). There are also other CS teachers who have published their exercises/projects on Repl.it free to use or remix.<p>There are also a number of tutorials (i.e., here's one for this year's Advent of Code Day 1 [3]). These give me favorable impressions of the active community.<p>I don't have any comments on their long-term path to profitability and growth, but the personal experiences I've had with it have been mostly positive so far.<p>------------<p>[1] <a href="https://repl.it/talk/share/GAME-ROOMS-Among-Us-ALPHA/79187" rel="nofollow">https://repl.it/talk/share/GAME-ROOMS-Among-Us-ALPHA/79187</a><p>[2] <a href="https://repl.it/talk/share/Turkey-Translator/82208" rel="nofollow">https://repl.it/talk/share/Turkey-Translator/82208</a><p>[3] <a href="https://repl.it/talk/learn/Advent-of-Code-1-Walkthrough/83539" rel="nofollow">https://repl.it/talk/learn/Advent-of-Code-1-Walkthrough/8353...</a>
Anyone know what their 30-day users looks like? It seems like a lot of people created accounts to try it, and this is growing, but it doesn't tell us anything about churn.
Cloud based ides make me feel uncomfortable. Do companies really want their developers dependent on a web app being online? Isn’t sublime so much faster than a web app? Are there IP issues to worry about from the “we can change our TOS at any time with no notice” clauses on these sites? Won’t the data be really tempting to sell one day? Maybe I’m just not the target audience for it
I tried to spin up a repl.it session for the first time yesterday, with the intent to hack on clojure solutions to Advent of Code 2020. After a while I just got pretty frustrated battling the editor's default/only formatting settings. Maybe I missed something, but they seem badly mismatched to how clojure code (and I'd say lisp generally) is normally formatted, it felt like writing clojure in a javascript editor.
This level of user engagement is fantastic but does it translate to actual revenue growth? Or is this only a hockey stick of expenses that will eventually run the company dry?
I'm surprised PG is commenting on registered users and exponential curves. Do you really think they are all programers? Why are we not seeing a graph for DAU?
It seems very focused on Python (not that there is anything wrong with that.) I tried to see if I could run a very basic Java Servlet application and there doesn't seem to be a way to make it work. Again, nothing wrong with that but it isn't as flexible as having a working local development environment.
One thing that always perplexed me about repl.it is the actual domain. .IT is (was?) supposed to be reserved to businesses and individuals based in Italy, but Repl.it is definitely not (all their job ads are for SF). Did TLD rules in Italy change, or are they dodging them with some fictitious shell company?
Started using Repl.it some years ago, then moved to Google colab - mainly because I use Python. Colab feels a lot smother, but I'll fire up Repl when tinkering with other languages.