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Really cool, Repl.it is the best online bite-sized programming platform I've ever used. The breadth of languages offered is surprising (Brainfuck and Scheme?!),

Really cool, Repl.it is the best online bite-sized programming platform I've ever used. The breadth of languages offered is surprising (Brainfuck and Scheme?!), and things I would have thought wouldn't be supported were supported. I say this in spite of an excruciating experience I had a few weeks ago where I led a Python for absolute beginners day-long workshop. I had tried Repl.it before writing the course materials and was mind-blown at how everything just worked, including the filesystem, which I needed for downloading NLTK modules. I decided to design the materials around Repl.it, letting me spare the class the possibly excruciating and definitely not fun experience of downloading and configuring Python and an IDE. Unfortunately, on the day of the workshop, Repl.it just didn't work for half the class, and for most of the rest, it was really, really slow. Hopefully this was just a hiccup.

amasad 8y ago
Thanks so much for the kind words! And apologies for said incident. I think you might've been caught in a recently deployed intrusion & spam detection systems. We've been battling crypto miners, evil hackers trying to launch attacks, and other nasty stuff. Of course, this is nothing new and we know how to deal with it but I think we just reached a scale where no other truly open computing platform has ever reached and we had to clamp down harder on abuse. Unfortunately, the systems are not very well-tuned yet. Can you please email me some more info (amjad@repl.it) so we can debug?
hayaodeh2 8y ago
Thanks for your feedback and for your kind words. I'm deeply sorry that you have experienced that. I can talk on behalf of the team and say that it should not be the case. Repl.it should work at any given time and definitely should not be slow, and the fact that you experienced that sounds like there must have been something wrong. if that ever happened to you please let us know ASAP.
piokoch 8y ago
"letting me spare the class the possibly excruciating and definitely not fun experience of downloading and configuring Python and an IDE" Aren't you afraid that class participants will have a hard time configuring later Python and IDE by themselves? Wouldn't be beneficial for them to spend some time setting up their own environment during the class? BTW I am curious in what way installing Anaconda and starting Jupyther notebook is "excruciating". Last time I did that it went kind of smooth, but maybe there are some gotchas I've missed (it was MS Windows machine, I had a admin privileges, etc.)?
- jsty 8y ago
  There's definitely a lot of benefit to ensuring that students are able to set up their own environment, but also a non-zero risk that front-loading this would put them off / distract them. Also, for short courses particularly, there's a danger that a significant proportion of time (especially for the instructor) is spent futzing around trying to fix broken environments. In my mind, something like repl.it would be ideal for getting through enough material such that the course participants were motivated and knowledgable enough to setup their own environments at a later stage in the course.
  - fnord123 8y ago
    It's not a distraction. Sadly it's a big part of Python development. :(
    - aidos 8y ago
      It's a distraction when you're learning. And even now, I do Python all the time and setting up any sort of environment is something I do _very_ infrequently.
- brownbat 8y ago
  For absolute beginners, I'd even prefer something like this: 1. Hit install on Python and accept the defaults. 2. Install a simple text editor with syntax highlighting. 3. Open a file right on your desktop and type two commands in it and press F5 or something to run it. Anaconda and Jupyter are great tools, but even they add complexity you don't need when teaching absolute beginners how accessible this can be. Here's Python. It's installed. Tell the computer what you want to do inside a file. You understand text files and how to store them where you want, use your own conventions for that. Shove it in documents or whatever. We'll learn about project management and version control later, when you're writing programs more than 20 lines long.
  - lgessler 8y ago
    Yes, that might be what I would do if I did the workshop again. I still like Repl.it because I think the distinction between the REPL and the file/editor is much easier to grasp there than with IDLE and IDLE's REPL, but running code locally is necessarily going to be more reliable than running code on a remote platform.
aloisdg 8y ago
> The breadth of languages offered is surprising Do you know Try it online? Try it online: https://tio.run/ https://tio.run/ code: https://github.com/TryItOnline https://github.com/TryItOnline
- lgessler 8y ago
  Wow really cool, thanks for mentioning it :)
- sivakon 8y ago
  Have you tried https://wandbox.org https://wandbox.org? It’s consistent and Github login saves your code in one page.
hantusk 8y ago
I hope. If you need redundancy, I would consider setting a parallel setup with glitch.com which to my surprise also supports python and is battle-tested. No affiliation, just a happy user (of both repl.it and glitch)
- lgessler 8y ago
  neat! I didn't know there were so many options in this space!

amasad 8y ago

Thanks so much for the kind words! And apologies for said incident. I think you might've been caught in a recently deployed intrusion & spam detection systems. We've been battling crypto miners, evil hackers trying to launch attacks, and other nasty stuff. Of course, this is nothing new and we know how to deal with it but I think we just reached a scale where no other truly open computing platform has ever reached and we had to clamp down harder on abuse. Unfortunately, the systems are not very well-tuned yet. Can you please email me some more info (amjad@repl.it) so we can debug?

hayaodeh2 8y ago

Thanks for your feedback and for your kind words. I'm deeply sorry that you have experienced that. I can talk on behalf of the team and say that it should not be the case. Repl.it should work at any given time and definitely should not be slow, and the fact that you experienced that sounds like there must have been something wrong. if that ever happened to you please let us know ASAP.

piokoch 8y ago

"letting me spare the class the possibly excruciating and definitely not fun experience of downloading and configuring Python and an IDE" Aren't you afraid that class participants will have a hard time configuring later Python and IDE by themselves? Wouldn't be beneficial for them to spend some time setting up their own environment during the class? BTW I am curious in what way installing Anaconda and starting Jupyther notebook is "excruciating". Last time I did that it went kind of smooth, but maybe there are some gotchas I've missed (it was MS Windows machine, I had a admin privileges, etc.)?

jsty 8y ago
There's definitely a lot of benefit to ensuring that students are able to set up their own environment, but also a non-zero risk that front-loading this would put them off / distract them. Also, for short courses particularly, there's a danger that a significant proportion of time (especially for the instructor) is spent futzing around trying to fix broken environments. In my mind, something like repl.it would be ideal for getting through enough material such that the course participants were motivated and knowledgable enough to setup their own environments at a later stage in the course.
- fnord123 8y ago
  It's not a distraction. Sadly it's a big part of Python development. :(
  - aidos 8y ago
    It's a distraction when you're learning. And even now, I do Python all the time and setting up any sort of environment is something I do _very_ infrequently.
brownbat 8y ago
For absolute beginners, I'd even prefer something like this: 1. Hit install on Python and accept the defaults. 2. Install a simple text editor with syntax highlighting. 3. Open a file right on your desktop and type two commands in it and press F5 or something to run it. Anaconda and Jupyter are great tools, but even they add complexity you don't need when teaching absolute beginners how accessible this can be. Here's Python. It's installed. Tell the computer what you want to do inside a file. You understand text files and how to store them where you want, use your own conventions for that. Shove it in documents or whatever. We'll learn about project management and version control later, when you're writing programs more than 20 lines long.
- lgessler 8y ago
  Yes, that might be what I would do if I did the workshop again. I still like Repl.it because I think the distinction between the REPL and the file/editor is much easier to grasp there than with IDLE and IDLE's REPL, but running code locally is necessarily going to be more reliable than running code on a remote platform.

aloisdg 8y ago

> The breadth of languages offered is surprising Do you know Try it online? Try it online: https://tio.run/ https://tio.run/ code: https://github.com/TryItOnline https://github.com/TryItOnline

lgessler 8y ago
Wow really cool, thanks for mentioning it :)
sivakon 8y ago
Have you tried https://wandbox.org https://wandbox.org? It’s consistent and Github login saves your code in one page.

hantusk 8y ago

I hope. If you need redundancy, I would consider setting a parallel setup with glitch.com which to my surprise also supports python and is battle-tested. No affiliation, just a happy user (of both repl.it and glitch)

lgessler 8y ago
neat! I didn't know there were so many options in this space!