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> we’re also excited to announce one of the first (of many!) projects that Amjad has worked on with us: Codecademy Labs, the easiest way to play with JavaScript

> we’re also excited to announce one of the first (of many!) projects that Amjad has worked on with us: Codecademy Labs, the easiest way to play with JavaScript, Ruby, and Python online I'll just leave this here so we can all bask in the insane hypocrisy of this entire episode. https://www.codecademy.com/resources/blog/amjad-joins-codecademy/ https://www.codecademy.com/resources/blog/amjad-joins-codeca... Edit: See Amjad's response below – seems Repl.it may have pre-dated this hiring in which case it makes the irony slightly less delicious. Did no learnings from scaling the concept at Codeacademy make it into the current product?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
simonhamp 5y ago
Cheaters always watching over their shoulder. How can you trust people if you know they can't trust you? Or worse, you can't trust yourself!
- ztratar 5y ago
  Just going out to say the amount of speculation on this thread combined with character assassination is pretty shitty. This is one side of the story, we don't have much evidence either direction, and it's not clear there was any "cheating" involved in anyone's past. HN should do better.
  - truetraveller 5y ago
    Couldn't agree more.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    The CEO Amjad Masad has responded in this post. This is a story told with receipts, and receipts carry a weight of their own. Namely, private emails made public. You can see for yourself whether you'll ever see the other side speak through the language of receipts. So far all he has done is double down on the story told through the emails.
- truetraveller 5y ago
  Simon, this is a wrong reply. Tone down the rhetoric a notch, please.
  - xenihn 5y ago
    It's a valuable idea that everyone should keep in mind throughout their lives, and throughout their careers. Same thing with people who speak negatively of others to you in private. Odds are they do the same thing, but about you, when speaking with others. If you confide something negative about someone else to them, they'll probably tell that person.
    - truetraveller 5y ago
      Yes, it's a great lesson. And "speaking negatively" is another great lesson. Thank you. But, we can't just call (even implicitly) Amjad a "cheater".
  - philosopher1234 5y ago
    It's "wrong"? Laughable. How, exactly, is it "wrong"? It comes off to me as very plausible, and appropriate.
  - simonhamp 5y ago
    Lol. This isn't rhetoric, this is lived experience. No character assassination required - the character in question has assassinated themselves
- mmastrac 5y ago
  I don't agree with @amasad's actions at all, but I think this is a very uncivil comment.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ahmedalsudani 5y ago
Hah. Good find. No wonder he's paranoid about a weekend project :)
ivan888 5y ago
To be fair, you can see that the README of the jq-console project that was mentioned in this article had a reference to what seems to be the predecessor of repl.it months prior to the publication of this article: https://github.com/replit-archive/jq-console/blame/7c0b9ffa857c2680ff3e6c16d2423ed5797ed126/README.md https://github.com/replit-archive/jq-console/blame/7c0b9ffa8... However... the irony is still hilarious, and this in no way excuses Amjad's emails
PhineasRex 5y ago
This explains a lot of why he's so threatened by this random POC. He's projecting onto the author the exact thing that he did.
- neweggrma 5y ago
  I mean... of course it is. Someone could (and likely is) building a better Repl.it with Nix and Theia. It's fucking flabbergasting to me that everyone in this thread acts like Repl.it is some magical product. And that's not even accounting for the half-dozen other production-quality VS-Code-in-browser projects. Sorry, it's just not a unique space. Not surprising at an that an egostistic founder isn't handling it well.
  - styfle 5y ago
    Indeed, there are a lot of options out there https://github.com/styfle/awesome-online-ide https://github.com/styfle/awesome-online-ide
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Even neglecting Godbolt, Cppreference, and Coliru. Godbolt is Compiler Explorer, mainly to look at assembly output, but provides editing, benchmarking, and profiling of many languages and compiler versions. I think Godbolt delegates running code to some other site, don't recall who. Cppreference.com is mainly a C++ and C language and library standards reference library, but provides sample programs and means to run them on various compiler versions. That uses Coliru, which also provides edit, build, and run.
- andreyf 5y ago
  Precisely, and in that context, let's remember that such projection is fundamental to our psychology. Thus, this story would better serve as litany of cautionary vignettes of humans being human than a story of David v Goliath, a tale of The Demanding Intern, or anything else bigger-than-life.
- truetraveller 5y ago
amasad 5y ago
That was a clone of Replit that we made work at Codecademy. I started working on Replit (or repl.it) back when I was a student in Jordan. I didn't have a laptop so every time I wanted to get some programming done I had to setup a development environment at the university or at work. The idea for Replit was when you needed a repl to do some coding you should easily get one from anywhere including a mobile device. I thought it would benefit many people, especially those who don't have the means to buy expensive computers. It took 2 years of work to get something working and in 2011 we launched on HN (2011 web archive snapshot here https://web.archive.org/web/20111007050930/http://repl.it/ https://web.archive.org/web/20111007050930/http://repl.it/ and HN launch here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3056490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3056490). It was the first of its kind and it inspired a lot of projects and still does today. It was totally open-source (https://github.com/replit-archive/repl.it https://github.com/replit-archive/repl.it) and after the launch it was used as infrastructure by Codecademy (which later employed me) and Udacity and many others to deliver interactive coding in the browser. I was thrilled about that. Now, a lot of people implicitly assume that in a dispute between for-profit company and an open-source project, the for-profit company must be in the wrong. But there is some line that it's unethical to cross in copying a former employer's product (if you don't believe that, you can stop reading now, because no argument will convince you) and I think to someone who knew Replit's architecture well, this project would clearly be across it. It copied even unique, invisible aspects of Replit's architecture that I consider to be flaws. That's the hallmark of copying versus merely writing one's own program to solve the same problem.
- zxzax 5y ago
  Hi Amjad, thanks for taking the time to respond. Can you please talk to Radon and work with him to remove the offending "unique and invisible" aspects, to make it so he can put his project back up? There must be some way to make it so that these projects can co-exist without causing any trouble, and it can probably done in a way that is much cheaper than bringing a lawsuit.
  - amasad 5y ago
    Done.
White_Wolf 5y ago
Maybe it's worth having a chat with the EFF guys. They might be interested in what is going on.
rurabe 5y ago
pretty weird/low class move to build a free clone of the product you just worked on. pretty petty decision to threaten to sue your former intern for his weird move. also, threatening someone with money is a pretty surefire way to look like an asshole. similarly petty decision to spend hours documenting everything to post on HN and start throwing mud in public. everyone seems well within their legal rights but ethically seems like there were a lot of off-ramps for someone to be the bigger person and none were taken.
- parafactual 5y ago
  Is it really "petty" if you are receiving dubious legal threats from a large corporation? Even if one is confident that they haven't, say, infringed IP, legal fees can be crippling. It seems worse to keep quiet if you are being bullied by a well-known and respected person/entity more powerful than you.
  - rurabe 5y ago
    yeah patent trolls and frivolous lawsuits are definitely a problem, but this doesn't really smell the same. and i see your point, he seems to be within his rights to do this. even if i would be pretty irritated if someone ripped off my idea after working with me, it's problematic if he is being bullied from doing so. i don't know how that extends to ethics though, which seems to be the theme of his post. either there's a moral code and i think he's shading the wrong side, or its the law of the jungle and then the ceo is free to use a lawsuit to stop him. i think it's just the general sense of thirst and drama that i get from his blog and emails that make me think he's really after the publicity instead. which he has accomplished.
    - parafactual 5y ago
      Maybe he wants to stand up to Replit/Amjad, and he realizes that if he doesn't make a scene and garner public support then he has no chance. That wouldn't mean that he's just in it for the publicity. How else do you protect yourself against an entity with much more power and money than you?
stanislavb 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Amjad is currently thinking how to coerce Radon to take down the post, too.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

simonhamp 5y ago

Cheaters always watching over their shoulder. How can you trust people if you know they can't trust you? Or worse, you can't trust yourself!

ztratar 5y ago
Just going out to say the amount of speculation on this thread combined with character assassination is pretty shitty. This is one side of the story, we don't have much evidence either direction, and it's not clear there was any "cheating" involved in anyone's past. HN should do better.
- truetraveller 5y ago
  Couldn't agree more.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  The CEO Amjad Masad has responded in this post. This is a story told with receipts, and receipts carry a weight of their own. Namely, private emails made public. You can see for yourself whether you'll ever see the other side speak through the language of receipts. So far all he has done is double down on the story told through the emails.
truetraveller 5y ago
Simon, this is a wrong reply. Tone down the rhetoric a notch, please.
- xenihn 5y ago
  It's a valuable idea that everyone should keep in mind throughout their lives, and throughout their careers. Same thing with people who speak negatively of others to you in private. Odds are they do the same thing, but about you, when speaking with others. If you confide something negative about someone else to them, they'll probably tell that person.
  - truetraveller 5y ago
    Yes, it's a great lesson. And "speaking negatively" is another great lesson. Thank you. But, we can't just call (even implicitly) Amjad a "cheater".
- philosopher1234 5y ago
  It's "wrong"? Laughable. How, exactly, is it "wrong"? It comes off to me as very plausible, and appropriate.
- simonhamp 5y ago
  Lol. This isn't rhetoric, this is lived experience. No character assassination required - the character in question has assassinated themselves
mmastrac 5y ago
I don't agree with @amasad's actions at all, but I think this is a very uncivil comment.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ahmedalsudani 5y ago

Hah. Good find. No wonder he's paranoid about a weekend project :)

ivan888 5y ago

To be fair, you can see that the README of the jq-console project that was mentioned in this article had a reference to what seems to be the predecessor of repl.it months prior to the publication of this article: https://github.com/replit-archive/jq-console/blame/7c0b9ffa857c2680ff3e6c16d2423ed5797ed126/README.md https://github.com/replit-archive/jq-console/blame/7c0b9ffa8... However... the irony is still hilarious, and this in no way excuses Amjad's emails

PhineasRex 5y ago

This explains a lot of why he's so threatened by this random POC. He's projecting onto the author the exact thing that he did.

neweggrma 5y ago
I mean... of course it is. Someone could (and likely is) building a better Repl.it with Nix and Theia. It's fucking flabbergasting to me that everyone in this thread acts like Repl.it is some magical product. And that's not even accounting for the half-dozen other production-quality VS-Code-in-browser projects. Sorry, it's just not a unique space. Not surprising at an that an egostistic founder isn't handling it well.
- styfle 5y ago
  Indeed, there are a lot of options out there https://github.com/styfle/awesome-online-ide https://github.com/styfle/awesome-online-ide
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Even neglecting Godbolt, Cppreference, and Coliru. Godbolt is Compiler Explorer, mainly to look at assembly output, but provides editing, benchmarking, and profiling of many languages and compiler versions. I think Godbolt delegates running code to some other site, don't recall who. Cppreference.com is mainly a C++ and C language and library standards reference library, but provides sample programs and means to run them on various compiler versions. That uses Coliru, which also provides edit, build, and run.
andreyf 5y ago
Precisely, and in that context, let's remember that such projection is fundamental to our psychology. Thus, this story would better serve as litany of cautionary vignettes of humans being human than a story of David v Goliath, a tale of The Demanding Intern, or anything else bigger-than-life.
truetraveller 5y ago

amasad 5y ago

That was a clone of Replit that we made work at Codecademy. I started working on Replit (or repl.it) back when I was a student in Jordan. I didn't have a laptop so every time I wanted to get some programming done I had to setup a development environment at the university or at work. The idea for Replit was when you needed a repl to do some coding you should easily get one from anywhere including a mobile device. I thought it would benefit many people, especially those who don't have the means to buy expensive computers. It took 2 years of work to get something working and in 2011 we launched on HN (2011 web archive snapshot here https://web.archive.org/web/20111007050930/http://repl.it/ https://web.archive.org/web/20111007050930/http://repl.it/ and HN launch here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3056490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3056490). It was the first of its kind and it inspired a lot of projects and still does today. It was totally open-source (https://github.com/replit-archive/repl.it https://github.com/replit-archive/repl.it) and after the launch it was used as infrastructure by Codecademy (which later employed me) and Udacity and many others to deliver interactive coding in the browser. I was thrilled about that. Now, a lot of people implicitly assume that in a dispute between for-profit company and an open-source project, the for-profit company must be in the wrong. But there is some line that it's unethical to cross in copying a former employer's product (if you don't believe that, you can stop reading now, because no argument will convince you) and I think to someone who knew Replit's architecture well, this project would clearly be across it. It copied even unique, invisible aspects of Replit's architecture that I consider to be flaws. That's the hallmark of copying versus merely writing one's own program to solve the same problem.

zxzax 5y ago
Hi Amjad, thanks for taking the time to respond. Can you please talk to Radon and work with him to remove the offending "unique and invisible" aspects, to make it so he can put his project back up? There must be some way to make it so that these projects can co-exist without causing any trouble, and it can probably done in a way that is much cheaper than bringing a lawsuit.
- amasad 5y ago
  Done.

White_Wolf 5y ago

Maybe it's worth having a chat with the EFF guys. They might be interested in what is going on.

rurabe 5y ago

pretty weird/low class move to build a free clone of the product you just worked on. pretty petty decision to threaten to sue your former intern for his weird move. also, threatening someone with money is a pretty surefire way to look like an asshole. similarly petty decision to spend hours documenting everything to post on HN and start throwing mud in public. everyone seems well within their legal rights but ethically seems like there were a lot of off-ramps for someone to be the bigger person and none were taken.

parafactual 5y ago
Is it really "petty" if you are receiving dubious legal threats from a large corporation? Even if one is confident that they haven't, say, infringed IP, legal fees can be crippling. It seems worse to keep quiet if you are being bullied by a well-known and respected person/entity more powerful than you.
- rurabe 5y ago
  yeah patent trolls and frivolous lawsuits are definitely a problem, but this doesn't really smell the same. and i see your point, he seems to be within his rights to do this. even if i would be pretty irritated if someone ripped off my idea after working with me, it's problematic if he is being bullied from doing so. i don't know how that extends to ethics though, which seems to be the theme of his post. either there's a moral code and i think he's shading the wrong side, or its the law of the jungle and then the ceo is free to use a lawsuit to stop him. i think it's just the general sense of thirst and drama that i get from his blog and emails that make me think he's really after the publicity instead. which he has accomplished.
  - parafactual 5y ago
    Maybe he wants to stand up to Replit/Amjad, and he realizes that if he doesn't make a scene and garner public support then he has no chance. That wouldn't mean that he's just in it for the publicity. How else do you protect yourself against an entity with much more power and money than you?

stanislavb 5y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Amjad is currently thinking how to coerce Radon to take down the post, too.