18 ms·

I'm, generally, not bullish: But only because the predominating "what value do products like this bring" arguments from those who are bullish is some variation

by 015a 4y ago

I'm, generally, not bullish: But only because the predominating "what value do products like this bring" arguments from those who are bullish is some variation of "it's great for learning/beginners". That's simply no way to build a venture business (and replit has received... $105M). Higher layers of abstraction can make sense; no code tools can be killer; but that isn't really replit. Replit is just a weird product on the side of the abstraction spectrum which requires its devs to understand a large chunk of what would be required to get, say, a nodejs server running on, say, Heroku.

svnpenn 4y ago
Note Heroku isn't free anymore. I know you didn't say it was, but it's worth mentioning.
zoomzoom 4y ago
Understanding the moving parts well enough is one thing. Being responsible for writing and maintaining all the layers of configuration and glue it takes to properly operate web apps in the cloud is another. There's room for abstractions short of no-code that remove this burden, IMO, and not just for beginners or learning.
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
Replit isn't for building HA/mutli-tenant stateless, web applications with hot-hot failover, data redundancy, perfect docs and APIs It's for people who want to learn how to code or want to prototype something absolutely as quickly as possible with the minimal amount of tooling and experience.
- girvo 4y ago
  > It's for people who want to learn how to code or want to prototype something absolutely as quickly as possible with the minimal amount of tooling and experience For sure. I'm just personally not sure that's a billion-dollar company idea myself, which if you've taken $100 million+ of funding, it will need to be. Definitely willing to eat my words though if they pull it off: anything that gets more people into programming and understanding how the devices they use work is a good thing in my opinion (which is worth about as much as you just paid for it!)
  - guestbest 4y ago
    Funding goes to companies that will pass on a part or all of that funding on to partners. It is like a big wash that goes round and round until the right people get rich. And the reason for this is to make the world a better place
edmundsauto 4y ago
Just my take, but the more people who can “code”, even at a basic level, the better. Because then they intuit that the challenging part in not the words but the logic. Learn to code then be an “excel jockey”. Those folks create just as much value with less of the identity bullshit. Edit - sorry if this sounded confrontational. That wasn’t my intent - I just learned that I feel passionately about this topic.
- speed_spread 4y ago
  Excel certainly has it's place and is great as an interchange format and prototyping platform for domain specialists. I agree that it's unjustly derided by snobbish programmers. Converting to and from CSV is cheaply implemented and can do wonder as human interface to a system since "non programmers" know how to deal with that. The problems start when it is pushed beyond its limits, sheets can become undocumented mess of cell spaghetti which users still expect to scale up and grow new features indefinitely. It's hard to determine for Excel coders when they are past that cost/benefit tipover point and move up to a more robust set of programming tools.

by 015a 4y ago

svnpenn 4y ago

Note Heroku isn't free anymore. I know you didn't say it was, but it's worth mentioning.

zoomzoom 4y ago

Understanding the moving parts well enough is one thing. Being responsible for writing and maintaining all the layers of configuration and glue it takes to properly operate web apps in the cloud is another. There's room for abstractions short of no-code that remove this burden, IMO, and not just for beginners or learning.

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

Replit isn't for building HA/mutli-tenant stateless, web applications with hot-hot failover, data redundancy, perfect docs and APIs It's for people who want to learn how to code or want to prototype something absolutely as quickly as possible with the minimal amount of tooling and experience.

girvo 4y ago
> It's for people who want to learn how to code or want to prototype something absolutely as quickly as possible with the minimal amount of tooling and experience For sure. I'm just personally not sure that's a billion-dollar company idea myself, which if you've taken $100 million+ of funding, it will need to be. Definitely willing to eat my words though if they pull it off: anything that gets more people into programming and understanding how the devices they use work is a good thing in my opinion (which is worth about as much as you just paid for it!)
- guestbest 4y ago
  Funding goes to companies that will pass on a part or all of that funding on to partners. It is like a big wash that goes round and round until the right people get rich. And the reason for this is to make the world a better place

edmundsauto 4y ago

Just my take, but the more people who can “code”, even at a basic level, the better. Because then they intuit that the challenging part in not the words but the logic. Learn to code then be an “excel jockey”. Those folks create just as much value with less of the identity bullshit. Edit - sorry if this sounded confrontational. That wasn’t my intent - I just learned that I feel passionately about this topic.

speed_spread 4y ago
Excel certainly has it's place and is great as an interchange format and prototyping platform for domain specialists. I agree that it's unjustly derided by snobbish programmers. Converting to and from CSV is cheaply implemented and can do wonder as human interface to a system since "non programmers" know how to deal with that. The problems start when it is pushed beyond its limits, sheets can become undocumented mess of cell spaghetti which users still expect to scale up and grow new features indefinitely. It's hard to determine for Excel coders when they are past that cost/benefit tipover point and move up to a more robust set of programming tools.