25 ms·

Repl.it Database

319 points by amasad 6y ago

excetera 6y ago
I will say it's eerily similar to EasyDB (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21587935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21587935), including the API, but it only seems to work in Repl it Did Repl.it acquire them or? EDIT: My bad it seems to work elsewhere https://docs.repl.it/misc/database#how-do-i-share-a-database-across-repls https://docs.repl.it/misc/database#how-do-i-share-a-database...
capableweb 6y ago
Neat! But I wanted one repl for every database :(
laluser 6y ago
I have been a user of repl.it for quite some time. I use it occasionally to work on small projects with my younger sister who is a CS major. I would actually really love something like repl.it for my work. There are a ton of places where the normal code, review, deploy, validate, etc lifecycle of development is way too slow for small projects or for prototyping.
- amasad 6y ago
  That's exactly how we use it internally at Repl.it and honestly it's almost like an organizational superpower. We can for example deploy a slack bot to help with deployment in minutes instead of days, and it's all collaborative. Working on internal tools resembles more gardening than building at this point -- constant improvement and evolution. If you care to chat about this use-case and help us learn more please email me amjad@repl.it
  - dmos62 6y ago
    I'm really interested; could you point to some walkthrough/demo of such a workflow? I'm having trouble seeing it.
- sq_ 6y ago
  Same, I love it for hacking together a quick prototype or testing some small bit of library functionality I need for a larger project. Along with language and library docs, it’s usually one of the tabs I’ve got open when working on a project.
kochman 6y ago
Hey HN! I’m a Repl.it engineer who’s been focused on bringing Database to life. Happy to read your comments and answer any questions you might have.
- prionassembly 6y ago
  This is the first I'm hearing of repl.it and it looks like an amazing resource. How does this work business-wise? How does it make money? Edit: Will Julia be supported in the future? This is not good... https://repl.it/@asemic/ConsiderateBelatedAccounting https://repl.it/@asemic/ConsiderateBelatedAccounting
  - jtanderson 6y ago
    It's subscription-based to get advanced features: https://repl.it/site/pricing https://repl.it/site/pricing
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - kasperset 6y ago
    Repl.it cannot add install packages and has similar issues with R as well. I hope they can add that feature.
  - kwertzzz 6y ago
    I tried Julia as well to test the database feature. Unfortunately, when I `import HTTP`, I get "repl process died unexpectedly: signal killed". (julia 1.3.1 and HTTP v0.8.17)
- nexuist 6y ago
  This is really cool! Can I ask what you're using under the hood to power this? Redis, CouchDB or some in-house system? For filtering/search queries, is the idea to use the prefix system to group related items together, and then run matches using that?
  - 6y ago
rbtprograms 6y ago
Looks pretty neat! I wonder if multiple repl's can hook up to a singular database, this post makes it sound like it's a 1:1 relationship. Either way Repl stays adding great features.
- kochman 6y ago
  Right now it is 1:1, but we're hearing that people would like to share one database among many repls. Something you can do right now is spin up a repl and have other repls talk to it over HTTP to share a database: https://docs.repl.it/misc/database#how-do-i-share-a-database-across-repls https://docs.repl.it/misc/database#how-do-i-share-a-database...
donpark 6y ago
Cool natural way to encourage signup and paid accounts. Well done!
a0zU 6y ago
>Repl.it is already the best place to build your apps. no...
- applecrazy 6y ago
  Why the negativity? I think Repl.it is a great place to prototype ideas and work on things without needing to spin up an entire environment on your computer. I think of it like a scratchpad, and with some of their new functionality, it's also become somewhat of a CodePen type platform where you can host tech demos and fun projects—all for free. I've used Repl.it ever since it became publicly available and I've used it to teach some classes and camps. As a college student, it's also a great environment to quickly open a coding scratchpad to do the occasional LeetCode problem and share my solution with others.
  - kyawzazaw 6y ago
    How does GitHub codespaces factor in?
    - applecrazy 6y ago
      I have access to the Codespaces beta, but my friends (also in college) and I have struggled to find a usecase for it. It's a bit too hard to setup for one-off explorations/experiments (like Repl.it). In the past, I've used cloud IDEs like Cloud9 and CodeAnywhere, mainly because I worked on the school computers in high school. But other than that, I don't know why a regular dev or even a college student might use this. Although one usecase may be easily-usable special-purpose programming environments for higher-level college courses that might otherwise require a ton of local setup. And the tight integration with Github might actually make sense for that setting.
      - kyawzazaw 6y ago
        I believe it is useful for Chromebooks, replicating dev setup especially for opensource projects.
  - 6y ago
kampsduac 6y ago
We use repl.it in an AP Computer Science course I co-teach. Incredible tool for students who are learning Java, allowing them to code and collaborate on their Chromebooks, no Java local setup required. The AP CS course exercises and concepts don't require persistence of data, but this could really open up opportunities for students to create more advanced projects!
- amasad 6y ago
  That's awesome! We've been working with some teachers to develop free curriculum, if you're interested doing something with data would love to chat (we have budget for this). https://docs.repl.it/curriculum/Intro https://docs.repl.it/curriculum/Intro
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - harikb 6y ago
    I have been using repl.it to teach coding to some high school students. Here is some feedback 1. It would be great if you gave a shell level access to the teacher/paid accounts to manage shared REPLs. When there are 100s of shared URLs to deal with, the UI is very limited to search and find repls. 2. While I understand the need to simplify UI, it is not clear why "Python" REPL comes with a folder view to the left by "Python + PyGames" one doesn't. Similarly shell is only accessible in certain types of REPLs. I understand there some key combination to start shell, but only works some of the time. 3. I had a case of one REPL running an infinite loop - none of us could do anything to terminate it. 4. Once we wrote some code that generated a file. It took us several refresh/logout sequences to make it visible in the file manager - clear support for such use-cases would be helpful.
    - amasad 6y ago
      >1. It would be great if you gave a shell level access to the teacher/paid accounts to manage shared REPLs. When there are 100s of shared URLs to deal with, the UI is very limited to search and find repls. Like an account wide shell access? That's an interesting idea although not sure about the feasibility since every repl is it's own container. One thing we've been toying with is a CLI-like tool that let's you manage your account. We can add account-wide grep and things like it there. You can access an early version here: https://repl.it/~/cli https://repl.it/~/cli >2. While I understand the need to simplify UI, it is not clear why "Python" REPL comes with a folder view to the left by "Python + PyGames" one doesn't. Similarly shell is only accessible in certain types of REPLs. I understand there some key combination to start shell, but only works some of the time. This is great feedback and we're already starting to address it. The difference between different environments is annoying. I believe PyGame is the same environment so you might be talking about "Python with Turtle" which currently runs a different environment. We're getting close to addressing all this. As for the shell it's accessible everywhere now, you can pull it up from the command-bar https://blog.repl.it/commandbar https://blog.repl.it/commandbar >3. I had a case of one REPL running an infinite loop - none of us could do anything to terminate it. That's surprising to hear because we do a lot of work to try to handle infinite loops and make it easy to terminate (try this for example https://repl.it/@amasad/loop-test https://repl.it/@amasad/loop-test). Do you remember exact steps or do you have a link to debug? You can always email me with bugs or feedback: amjad@repl.it >4. Once we wrote some code that generated a file. It took us several refresh/logout sequences to make it visible in the file manager - clear support for such use-cases would be helpful. It's actually quite common use-case to generate files and while incredibly tricky to make it work well I believe we've recently became better at this. Can you give it another shot? Again please email me with the repl if it doesn't work. Thanks so much, feedback like this is always valuable. You'd be happy to know that a company-wide priority right now is quality, bugs, and reliability. By early next year we'll be much more polished.
ketzo 6y ago
Damn, feels like every other week I see repl.it on the front page of HN with some rad new feature. Y'all are doing awesome work, keep it up.
pryelluw 6y ago
Co-organizer of PyATL here (https://pyatl.dev https://pyatl.dev). This is a great addition to the product. Ive been working on adding repl.it to our toolbox. Is there sone kind of plan that would support a grassroots group like ours? I specially like the ability to have classrooms as we are teaching more and more every week.
jamestimmins 6y ago
Whenever I see Repl product announcements, I'm reminded of this quote from Paul Graham. If you want to take on a problem as big as the ones I've discussed, don't make a direct frontal attack on it. Don't say, for example, that you're going to replace email. If you do that you raise too many expectations. Your employees and investors will constantly be asking "are we there yet?" and you'll have an army of haters waiting to see you fail. Just say you're building todo-list software. That sounds harmless. People can notice you've replaced email when it's a fait accompli. I wonder if there's something similar going on with Repl, and if so, what their end goal is.
- tyingq 6y ago
  Cloudflare seems to be on a similar path with their edge workers and KV store. No web IDE, but they do have a client side tool called wrangler that's integrated with all that.
- darkhorse13 6y ago
  I love this comment because after reading it, I feel strongly that something like this is definitely going on with Repl.it. The potential of the product definitely seems huge, and it feels like we have not even seen the full picture yet.
  - Aearnus 6y ago
    Seconded. There's definitely something deeper going on here, and I'm so excited to see it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jameslk 6y ago
  The end goal is to move the IDE and all development tooling to the cloud (similar to what GitHub Codespaces is trying to do). All editor defaults, build tools, linting, environment best practices, etc will be provided for you without all the ceremony of setting it up. This will make it easier for new team members to be productive from day 1 and it will allow you to have multiple development environments for each branch of work. The realization is that if you control the development environment, by introducing seamless integrations with your hosting through things like easy-to-use databases (i.e. vendor lock-in), you also have control over the hosting of applications. That's a pretty lucrative business as we've seen with AWS, GCP, Azure, etc. Also, there's a trend towards low code/no code, so everything is becoming tiny microservices integrated with other SaaS solutions. Something like Repl.it can help you with the "last mile" of development work when you need build something lightweight and quick.
gorgoiler 6y ago
I’ve introduced REPL.it into my new job as a teacher, this year. It is utterly transformative. Multiplayer, in a COVID classroom, means I can easily help any pupil without having to PPE-up and break into their bubble. At the start of every class I post a google quiz whose sole question is “what is your REPL multiplayer link for this class?”. I haven’t used many of the other school features for REPL.it. I can think of a few I’d love to see. Packages are so easy to install. A pupil today told me they’d not really had any luck with their coursework because they couldn’t install textract. A few clicks and they had a poetry enabled repl with textract read to go. REPL.it has brought about a quantum leap in the way we are working with pupils. It is the epitome of how frictionlessness can make an enormous difference.
- remram 6y ago
  Your post got me intrigued, but I couldn't get any multiplayer to work. Does it only work when signed in? I think it is cool to offer some functionality to guest users, however they should make it clearer what the limitations are so that people evaluating it get a good sense for the features. I even created an account, which changed my repl to "anyone can edit" to "forks on edit" apparently? But still no multiplayer?
  - gorgoiler 6y ago
    I am signed in. Multiplayer URLs have “join-“ in the path, and are available from the “share” button in the top left. It would be very handy (and intuitive) if all REPLs were a live read-only window on what the owner was typing. The reload-page-to-get-latest-version thing works, but multiplayer is there and awesome so it seems odd to hide it with a different type of URL that looks almost identical to the regular read-only fork-on-edit one.
    - amasad 6y ago
      You're absolutely right! The UX could be so much better where every repl is live and you can request to edit. Working on that.
  - 6y ago
slifin 6y ago
I really wish they'd merge their Clojure pull request The performance of that REPL really bombed maybe a year ago now I've had to stop using it or recommending it
- markc 6y ago
  I want to like repl.it, and it's obviously great for many use cases, but compared to, say, CIDER for Clojure, it's like typing with cement gloves. Even if it weren't so slow, there are some features I'd need before considering it for even quick/casual coding tasks: Library loading, Paredit (or parinfer), Flexible eval (sexp, form, selection), Easy help/reference and function signature help (like Eldoc).
typon 6y ago
I wish there was a tool that combined the information output of godbolt with the rest of repl.it features for C++. I would pay for such a tool.
btouellette 6y ago
Cloud9 used to be my primary development environment for anything Node-based or intended for the web. Loved the features and the anywhere-access of an online IDE. Then Amazon bought it and effectively removed their free-tier by billing you for the AWS hours the environment took to run (I know there is an AWS free tier but it is one-time and expires after a year). When looking around for a replacement Repl.it was the only other thing remotely close in features. The only two issues that I ran into was not having the ability to run local DBs and Chrome reporting the web preview page for my replit as containing malware and not letting me load it. C9 basically just dropped you to a Linux shell where you could install and run your own copy of Mongo or Postgres. This seems like it would satisfy a lot of use cases and running your DB on an external provider isn't too tough anyway. The second issue is probably just par for the course when allowing user executed code and web content to be hosted from your servers although I never got hit with the same on Cloud9.
jslakro 6y ago
I've not used a cloud dev environment since a couple months before Cloud9 changed the terms of service. I see repl.it as a good replacement and absolutely will give it a chance
nynx 6y ago
Has repl.it ever thought about supporting self-hosted repls? I would kill for a repl.it interface to my servers, even if it only supported one or a few languages.
kirillzubovsky 6y ago
Love seeing team Replit respond to feedback and move fast. I am using them for https://suddenschools.org https://suddenschools.org courses and couldn't be happier. Being able to start with the same environment for every student is a huge plus. Keep on crushing it!
triptych 6y ago
You can even run Doom on Repl.it https://repl.it/talk/share/DOOM-1993-on-replit-yes-really/13526 https://repl.it/talk/share/DOOM-1993-on-replit-yes-really/13...
miki123211 6y ago
I'm quite sad repl.it is used in schools, as its accessibility for the blind is almost nonexistent, or at least it was when I last checked it a few months ago. They have enough lock in with the collaboration and sharing features that just using a different tool might be difficult. This is plain old discrimination against disabled students. Don't do it.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  There is no profit in supporting the blind.
- thawab 6y ago
  - Does the blind in the schools you mentioned want to learn programing and their only choice is repl.it? - if the answer is yes, how many blind people are there in these schools? - what was used in these schools before repl.it? did it help the blind? - when schools used repl.it did it help all students more than the old system?
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  This is silly. Your argument is purely based comparisons. If there is a tool that helps 99% of students learn better, don't refuse to use the tool just because it can't help the 1%. I'm NOT saying to forget about the 1%. Also do everything you can to help the 1%. But the 99% shouldn't be artificially slowed down just so they don't get ahead of the 1%. Sorry if that's controversial. Just seems ridiculous to me to prevent people from learning in whatever way is most effective to them.
real_kvothe 6y ago
Repl is a great tool that I have used many times and have directed many friends to. However, it is a bit surprising that I cannot choose a Python version? It defaults to >3.8 when starting a new Python repl
zamadatix 6y ago
Tangential but trying out Repl.it for the first time because of this post, is there any way to specify Node version or are you stuck on LTS?
MuffinFlavored 6y ago
docker-compose.yml Dockerfiles in general Terraform once repl.it has these features (which I am sure it is working on), it will be super powerful
Stratoscope 6y ago
Unsolicited testimonial: Repl.it is awesome! I'm a paying customer and use it all the time. Even though I have all the JetBrains IDEs along with VS Code and Visual Studio, if I want to try out something quickly it's faster and easier to do it on Repl.it. I've also been using Repl.it to post runnable code samples for some of my Stack Overflow answers. I applied for a job there a couple of months ago and got to (virtually) meet amasad and several of the team members. It didn't turn out to be a fit, but they are great people making a great product and rapidly improving it. For anyone looking, they are hiring, and yes, the jobs page is a Bash REPL! :-)
sneak 6y ago
I love repl.it and want to use it to build and run real apps. I can’t do that without the hosting component (which afaik isn’t shipped yet) and I won’t write code that locks me into a specific hosting choice, which is what this new “Database” feature seems to be. Coding to an API of a company that might not be in business in five years isn’t wise, no matter how much you like that company.
- rlayton2 6y ago
  This makes sense, but the Database seems to work mostly like a normal python dictionary. From that perspective, it would be easy to replace with a different solution if required (not trivial, but not hard).
  - sneak 6y ago
    I agree, but I'd much rather just write to a non-proprietary Postgres client API once and know that the replacement is literally "update an environment variable" and nothing more. It's almost certainly something that would need to be done in an SHTF, unscheduled event anyway, so best keep it to zero.
ngcc_hk 6y ago
Database?! Is it ready for production or still just for trying and teaching ?
maple3142 6y ago
Having a simple database it a great feature for prototyping, but I think having custom Dockerfile support would be even better. Current PHP support in repl.it pretty limit (Very few extensions are enabled, so you can't connect to real MySQL...). This won't be a problem if advanced users can use there own Dockerfile. UI wise, I think it would be good if repl.it can adopt a VSCode-like interface and their keybindings. GitHub codespaces and some other cloud coding platform already have this. Reliability of deployed services should be improved too. I tried use a website monitor to a repl.it with "Always On", but it will still be down several times a day. Each downtime is about 1~2 minutes.
jack-wang 6y ago
Can REPL be used in industry enterprises?
- amasad 6y ago
  What use-cases are you thinking to use it for?
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Key-value store: check. Next obvious step: providing a persistent PostgreSQL database where every customer can create tables, etc, up to a limit in storage or transactions to avoid misuse.

319 points by amasad 6y ago

I will say it's eerily similar to EasyDB (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21587935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21587935), including the API, but it only seems to work in Repl it Did Repl.it acquire them or? EDIT: My bad it seems to work elsewhere https://docs.repl.it/misc/database#how-do-i-share-a-database-across-repls https://docs.repl.it/misc/database#how-do-i-share-a-database...

capableweb 6y ago

Neat! But I wanted one repl for every database :(

laluser 6y ago

I have been a user of repl.it for quite some time. I use it occasionally to work on small projects with my younger sister who is a CS major. I would actually really love something like repl.it for my work. There are a ton of places where the normal code, review, deploy, validate, etc lifecycle of development is way too slow for small projects or for prototyping.

amasad 6y ago
That's exactly how we use it internally at Repl.it and honestly it's almost like an organizational superpower. We can for example deploy a slack bot to help with deployment in minutes instead of days, and it's all collaborative. Working on internal tools resembles more gardening than building at this point -- constant improvement and evolution. If you care to chat about this use-case and help us learn more please email me amjad@repl.it
- dmos62 6y ago
  I'm really interested; could you point to some walkthrough/demo of such a workflow? I'm having trouble seeing it.
sq_ 6y ago
Same, I love it for hacking together a quick prototype or testing some small bit of library functionality I need for a larger project. Along with language and library docs, it’s usually one of the tabs I’ve got open when working on a project.

kochman 6y ago

Hey HN! I’m a Repl.it engineer who’s been focused on bringing Database to life. Happy to read your comments and answer any questions you might have.

prionassembly 6y ago
This is the first I'm hearing of repl.it and it looks like an amazing resource. How does this work business-wise? How does it make money? Edit: Will Julia be supported in the future? This is not good... https://repl.it/@asemic/ConsiderateBelatedAccounting https://repl.it/@asemic/ConsiderateBelatedAccounting
- jtanderson 6y ago
  It's subscription-based to get advanced features: https://repl.it/site/pricing https://repl.it/site/pricing
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kasperset 6y ago
  Repl.it cannot add install packages and has similar issues with R as well. I hope they can add that feature.
- kwertzzz 6y ago
  I tried Julia as well to test the database feature. Unfortunately, when I `import HTTP`, I get "repl process died unexpectedly: signal killed". (julia 1.3.1 and HTTP v0.8.17)
nexuist 6y ago
This is really cool! Can I ask what you're using under the hood to power this? Redis, CouchDB or some in-house system? For filtering/search queries, is the idea to use the prefix system to group related items together, and then run matches using that?
- 6y ago

rbtprograms 6y ago

Looks pretty neat! I wonder if multiple repl's can hook up to a singular database, this post makes it sound like it's a 1:1 relationship. Either way Repl stays adding great features.

kochman 6y ago
Right now it is 1:1, but we're hearing that people would like to share one database among many repls. Something you can do right now is spin up a repl and have other repls talk to it over HTTP to share a database: https://docs.repl.it/misc/database#how-do-i-share-a-database-across-repls https://docs.repl.it/misc/database#how-do-i-share-a-database...

donpark 6y ago

Cool natural way to encourage signup and paid accounts. Well done!

a0zU 6y ago

>Repl.it is already the best place to build your apps. no...

applecrazy 6y ago
Why the negativity? I think Repl.it is a great place to prototype ideas and work on things without needing to spin up an entire environment on your computer. I think of it like a scratchpad, and with some of their new functionality, it's also become somewhat of a CodePen type platform where you can host tech demos and fun projects—all for free. I've used Repl.it ever since it became publicly available and I've used it to teach some classes and camps. As a college student, it's also a great environment to quickly open a coding scratchpad to do the occasional LeetCode problem and share my solution with others.
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  How does GitHub codespaces factor in?
  - applecrazy 6y ago
    I have access to the Codespaces beta, but my friends (also in college) and I have struggled to find a usecase for it. It's a bit too hard to setup for one-off explorations/experiments (like Repl.it). In the past, I've used cloud IDEs like Cloud9 and CodeAnywhere, mainly because I worked on the school computers in high school. But other than that, I don't know why a regular dev or even a college student might use this. Although one usecase may be easily-usable special-purpose programming environments for higher-level college courses that might otherwise require a ton of local setup. And the tight integration with Github might actually make sense for that setting.
    - kyawzazaw 6y ago
      I believe it is useful for Chromebooks, replicating dev setup especially for opensource projects.
- 6y ago

kampsduac 6y ago

We use repl.it in an AP Computer Science course I co-teach. Incredible tool for students who are learning Java, allowing them to code and collaborate on their Chromebooks, no Java local setup required. The AP CS course exercises and concepts don't require persistence of data, but this could really open up opportunities for students to create more advanced projects!

amasad 6y ago
That's awesome! We've been working with some teachers to develop free curriculum, if you're interested doing something with data would love to chat (we have budget for this). https://docs.repl.it/curriculum/Intro https://docs.repl.it/curriculum/Intro
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- harikb 6y ago
  I have been using repl.it to teach coding to some high school students. Here is some feedback 1. It would be great if you gave a shell level access to the teacher/paid accounts to manage shared REPLs. When there are 100s of shared URLs to deal with, the UI is very limited to search and find repls. 2. While I understand the need to simplify UI, it is not clear why "Python" REPL comes with a folder view to the left by "Python + PyGames" one doesn't. Similarly shell is only accessible in certain types of REPLs. I understand there some key combination to start shell, but only works some of the time. 3. I had a case of one REPL running an infinite loop - none of us could do anything to terminate it. 4. Once we wrote some code that generated a file. It took us several refresh/logout sequences to make it visible in the file manager - clear support for such use-cases would be helpful.
  - amasad 6y ago
    >1. It would be great if you gave a shell level access to the teacher/paid accounts to manage shared REPLs. When there are 100s of shared URLs to deal with, the UI is very limited to search and find repls. Like an account wide shell access? That's an interesting idea although not sure about the feasibility since every repl is it's own container. One thing we've been toying with is a CLI-like tool that let's you manage your account. We can add account-wide grep and things like it there. You can access an early version here: https://repl.it/~/cli https://repl.it/~/cli >2. While I understand the need to simplify UI, it is not clear why "Python" REPL comes with a folder view to the left by "Python + PyGames" one doesn't. Similarly shell is only accessible in certain types of REPLs. I understand there some key combination to start shell, but only works some of the time. This is great feedback and we're already starting to address it. The difference between different environments is annoying. I believe PyGame is the same environment so you might be talking about "Python with Turtle" which currently runs a different environment. We're getting close to addressing all this. As for the shell it's accessible everywhere now, you can pull it up from the command-bar https://blog.repl.it/commandbar https://blog.repl.it/commandbar >3. I had a case of one REPL running an infinite loop - none of us could do anything to terminate it. That's surprising to hear because we do a lot of work to try to handle infinite loops and make it easy to terminate (try this for example https://repl.it/@amasad/loop-test https://repl.it/@amasad/loop-test). Do you remember exact steps or do you have a link to debug? You can always email me with bugs or feedback: amjad@repl.it >4. Once we wrote some code that generated a file. It took us several refresh/logout sequences to make it visible in the file manager - clear support for such use-cases would be helpful. It's actually quite common use-case to generate files and while incredibly tricky to make it work well I believe we've recently became better at this. Can you give it another shot? Again please email me with the repl if it doesn't work. Thanks so much, feedback like this is always valuable. You'd be happy to know that a company-wide priority right now is quality, bugs, and reliability. By early next year we'll be much more polished.

ketzo 6y ago

Damn, feels like every other week I see repl.it on the front page of HN with some rad new feature. Y'all are doing awesome work, keep it up.

pryelluw 6y ago

Co-organizer of PyATL here (https://pyatl.dev https://pyatl.dev). This is a great addition to the product. Ive been working on adding repl.it to our toolbox. Is there sone kind of plan that would support a grassroots group like ours? I specially like the ability to have classrooms as we are teaching more and more every week.

jamestimmins 6y ago

Whenever I see Repl product announcements, I'm reminded of this quote from Paul Graham. If you want to take on a problem as big as the ones I've discussed, don't make a direct frontal attack on it. Don't say, for example, that you're going to replace email. If you do that you raise too many expectations. Your employees and investors will constantly be asking "are we there yet?" and you'll have an army of haters waiting to see you fail. Just say you're building todo-list software. That sounds harmless. People can notice you've replaced email when it's a fait accompli. I wonder if there's something similar going on with Repl, and if so, what their end goal is.

tyingq 6y ago
Cloudflare seems to be on a similar path with their edge workers and KV store. No web IDE, but they do have a client side tool called wrangler that's integrated with all that.
darkhorse13 6y ago
I love this comment because after reading it, I feel strongly that something like this is definitely going on with Repl.it. The potential of the product definitely seems huge, and it feels like we have not even seen the full picture yet.
- Aearnus 6y ago
  Seconded. There's definitely something deeper going on here, and I'm so excited to see it.
deleted 6y ago
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jameslk 6y ago
The end goal is to move the IDE and all development tooling to the cloud (similar to what GitHub Codespaces is trying to do). All editor defaults, build tools, linting, environment best practices, etc will be provided for you without all the ceremony of setting it up. This will make it easier for new team members to be productive from day 1 and it will allow you to have multiple development environments for each branch of work. The realization is that if you control the development environment, by introducing seamless integrations with your hosting through things like easy-to-use databases (i.e. vendor lock-in), you also have control over the hosting of applications. That's a pretty lucrative business as we've seen with AWS, GCP, Azure, etc. Also, there's a trend towards low code/no code, so everything is becoming tiny microservices integrated with other SaaS solutions. Something like Repl.it can help you with the "last mile" of development work when you need build something lightweight and quick.

gorgoiler 6y ago

I’ve introduced REPL.it into my new job as a teacher, this year. It is utterly transformative. Multiplayer, in a COVID classroom, means I can easily help any pupil without having to PPE-up and break into their bubble. At the start of every class I post a google quiz whose sole question is “what is your REPL multiplayer link for this class?”. I haven’t used many of the other school features for REPL.it. I can think of a few I’d love to see. Packages are so easy to install. A pupil today told me they’d not really had any luck with their coursework because they couldn’t install textract. A few clicks and they had a poetry enabled repl with textract read to go. REPL.it has brought about a quantum leap in the way we are working with pupils. It is the epitome of how frictionlessness can make an enormous difference.

remram 6y ago
Your post got me intrigued, but I couldn't get any multiplayer to work. Does it only work when signed in? I think it is cool to offer some functionality to guest users, however they should make it clearer what the limitations are so that people evaluating it get a good sense for the features. I even created an account, which changed my repl to "anyone can edit" to "forks on edit" apparently? But still no multiplayer?
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  I am signed in. Multiplayer URLs have “join-“ in the path, and are available from the “share” button in the top left. It would be very handy (and intuitive) if all REPLs were a live read-only window on what the owner was typing. The reload-page-to-get-latest-version thing works, but multiplayer is there and awesome so it seems odd to hide it with a different type of URL that looks almost identical to the regular read-only fork-on-edit one.
  - amasad 6y ago
    You're absolutely right! The UX could be so much better where every repl is live and you can request to edit. Working on that.
- 6y ago

slifin 6y ago

I really wish they'd merge their Clojure pull request The performance of that REPL really bombed maybe a year ago now I've had to stop using it or recommending it

markc 6y ago
I want to like repl.it, and it's obviously great for many use cases, but compared to, say, CIDER for Clojure, it's like typing with cement gloves. Even if it weren't so slow, there are some features I'd need before considering it for even quick/casual coding tasks: Library loading, Paredit (or parinfer), Flexible eval (sexp, form, selection), Easy help/reference and function signature help (like Eldoc).

typon 6y ago

I wish there was a tool that combined the information output of godbolt with the rest of repl.it features for C++. I would pay for such a tool.

btouellette 6y ago

Cloud9 used to be my primary development environment for anything Node-based or intended for the web. Loved the features and the anywhere-access of an online IDE. Then Amazon bought it and effectively removed their free-tier by billing you for the AWS hours the environment took to run (I know there is an AWS free tier but it is one-time and expires after a year). When looking around for a replacement Repl.it was the only other thing remotely close in features. The only two issues that I ran into was not having the ability to run local DBs and Chrome reporting the web preview page for my replit as containing malware and not letting me load it. C9 basically just dropped you to a Linux shell where you could install and run your own copy of Mongo or Postgres. This seems like it would satisfy a lot of use cases and running your DB on an external provider isn't too tough anyway. The second issue is probably just par for the course when allowing user executed code and web content to be hosted from your servers although I never got hit with the same on Cloud9.

jslakro 6y ago

I've not used a cloud dev environment since a couple months before Cloud9 changed the terms of service. I see repl.it as a good replacement and absolutely will give it a chance

nynx 6y ago

Has repl.it ever thought about supporting self-hosted repls? I would kill for a repl.it interface to my servers, even if it only supported one or a few languages.

kirillzubovsky 6y ago

Love seeing team Replit respond to feedback and move fast. I am using them for https://suddenschools.org https://suddenschools.org courses and couldn't be happier. Being able to start with the same environment for every student is a huge plus. Keep on crushing it!

triptych 6y ago

You can even run Doom on Repl.it https://repl.it/talk/share/DOOM-1993-on-replit-yes-really/13526 https://repl.it/talk/share/DOOM-1993-on-replit-yes-really/13...

miki123211 6y ago

I'm quite sad repl.it is used in schools, as its accessibility for the blind is almost nonexistent, or at least it was when I last checked it a few months ago. They have enough lock in with the collaboration and sharing features that just using a different tool might be difficult. This is plain old discrimination against disabled students. Don't do it.

Aeolun 6y ago
There is no profit in supporting the blind.
thawab 6y ago
- Does the blind in the schools you mentioned want to learn programing and their only choice is repl.it? - if the answer is yes, how many blind people are there in these schools? - what was used in these schools before repl.it? did it help the blind? - when schools used repl.it did it help all students more than the old system?
buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
This is silly. Your argument is purely based comparisons. If there is a tool that helps 99% of students learn better, don't refuse to use the tool just because it can't help the 1%. I'm NOT saying to forget about the 1%. Also do everything you can to help the 1%. But the 99% shouldn't be artificially slowed down just so they don't get ahead of the 1%. Sorry if that's controversial. Just seems ridiculous to me to prevent people from learning in whatever way is most effective to them.

real_kvothe 6y ago

Repl is a great tool that I have used many times and have directed many friends to. However, it is a bit surprising that I cannot choose a Python version? It defaults to >3.8 when starting a new Python repl

zamadatix 6y ago

Tangential but trying out Repl.it for the first time because of this post, is there any way to specify Node version or are you stuck on LTS?

MuffinFlavored 6y ago

docker-compose.yml Dockerfiles in general Terraform once repl.it has these features (which I am sure it is working on), it will be super powerful

Stratoscope 6y ago

Unsolicited testimonial: Repl.it is awesome! I'm a paying customer and use it all the time. Even though I have all the JetBrains IDEs along with VS Code and Visual Studio, if I want to try out something quickly it's faster and easier to do it on Repl.it. I've also been using Repl.it to post runnable code samples for some of my Stack Overflow answers. I applied for a job there a couple of months ago and got to (virtually) meet amasad and several of the team members. It didn't turn out to be a fit, but they are great people making a great product and rapidly improving it. For anyone looking, they are hiring, and yes, the jobs page is a Bash REPL! :-)

sneak 6y ago

I love repl.it and want to use it to build and run real apps. I can’t do that without the hosting component (which afaik isn’t shipped yet) and I won’t write code that locks me into a specific hosting choice, which is what this new “Database” feature seems to be. Coding to an API of a company that might not be in business in five years isn’t wise, no matter how much you like that company.

rlayton2 6y ago
This makes sense, but the Database seems to work mostly like a normal python dictionary. From that perspective, it would be easy to replace with a different solution if required (not trivial, but not hard).
- sneak 6y ago
  I agree, but I'd much rather just write to a non-proprietary Postgres client API once and know that the replacement is literally "update an environment variable" and nothing more. It's almost certainly something that would need to be done in an SHTF, unscheduled event anyway, so best keep it to zero.

ngcc_hk 6y ago

Database?! Is it ready for production or still just for trying and teaching ?

maple3142 6y ago

Having a simple database it a great feature for prototyping, but I think having custom Dockerfile support would be even better. Current PHP support in repl.it pretty limit (Very few extensions are enabled, so you can't connect to real MySQL...). This won't be a problem if advanced users can use there own Dockerfile. UI wise, I think it would be good if repl.it can adopt a VSCode-like interface and their keybindings. GitHub codespaces and some other cloud coding platform already have this. Reliability of deployed services should be improved too. I tried use a website monitor to a repl.it with "Always On", but it will still be down several times a day. Each downtime is about 1~2 minutes.

jack-wang 6y ago

Can REPL be used in industry enterprises?

amasad 6y ago
What use-cases are you thinking to use it for?

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

Key-value store: check. Next obvious step: providing a persistent PostgreSQL database where every customer can create tables, etc, up to a limit in storage or transactions to avoid misuse.