Hi HN! I've posted Pickcode a few times (most recently <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38365638">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38365638</a>), but we've improved things quite a bit so I thought it was worth posting again. This is a bit of 1.0 release after a long year of working on the company full time!<p>Pickcode is basically Replit-lite, for kids. The editor is simple: text editor + output console + big green button to run your code. We support Python, HTML/CSS/JS, Java, and our block/text hybrid language, Pickcode VL. We're partners on code.org's Hour of Code, and hundreds of thousands of students have tried our free stuff through them.<p>An account for individual kids is totally free, and we offer some free Python and Pickcode VL lessons to get them started. We make money by selling licenses to schools for better customer support and roster/lesson management features.<p>You can use this demo account I made to try out the editor:<p><pre><code> email: demo@student.pickcode.io
pw: Demo1234
</code></pre>
(Don't clobber other people's work, and what you put in the demo account is public so be nice)
Great project! I'm curious if the main customers are from the US?<p>I'm asking because I'm the author of <a href="https://glicol.org/" rel="nofollow">https://glicol.org/</a> and I have a similar app where teachers can see students' progress and students can form bands. But when I tried to commercialize it, I found that it was almost impossible to sell to schools in Northern Europe. The overall process was very slow and conservative.<p>Almost everyone recommended that I go to the US.
I like it! I fiddled around for a couple minutes. The UI is surprisingly non-buggy. I like how the code editor treats lines as draggable widgets, and I like the limited syntax selection. Props for focusing on school licenses and making individual accounts free.<p>Just a couple thoughts:<p>- maybe use horizontal editor splits by default when the screen aspect ratio is less than 1 (ie. for vertical mobile screens)<p>- shouldn't `math` be treated like other namespaces in the `call` menu? Eg. formatted with ellipses like `math...`, and offering a menu of functions right after being selected?<p>- any plans to make more detailed/friendly error messages? Eg. "Type error, invalid function call" feels a bit useless for a beginner<p>- any real-world examples of programs that kids have written?<p>- any plans to convert seamlessly between Pickcode's language, Python, and JS? Essentially being different views of the same program, for when the kid is ready to try another language.<p>And a bit unrelated, but any thoughts on Mark Rober's take on code editors? <a href="https://youtu.be/1j1kAuqePJo?si=6GtQPVgsFgUtGPw-&t=1109" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/1j1kAuqePJo?si=6GtQPVgsFgUtGPw-&t=1109</a>
Obviously not as fleshed out or beginner-friendly as yours, but I think the tiered approach is interesting.