[HN Gopher] Replit.com (YC W18) raises $80M Series B ___________________________________________________________________ Replit.com (YC W18) raises $80M Series B Author : plondon514 Score : 70 points Date : 2021-12-09 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.replit.com) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.replit.com) | poyu wrote: | Replit used to be good. I can open up a page and start writing | code. But now it requires an account, and the UI feels less | responsive than before. | jonny_eh wrote: | > But now it requires an account | | Considering how costly it is to run the service, requiring a | free account feels pretty fair. | paulgb wrote: | Especially since if you offer generic compute without any | form of registration, you're basically inviting people to | mine crypto with your AWS bills, which is something they've | experienced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26682237 | williamstein wrote: | At https://CoCalc.com we offer generic compute without any | form of registration required (see | https://cocalc.com/auth/try). And indeed, crypto mining is | a periodic headache for us. I think Replit used to have a | model that made it much easier for them to offer something | without registration, because they supported client side | Python, etc., via Emscripten. However, they eventually seem | to have moved away from that. | komuher wrote: | Is this the same company that CEO bullied intern to drop his open | source project and was exposed like 7 months ago? | cloogshicer wrote: | What really bugged me about this was actually how he handled | the backlash - he initially doubled down, saying he was doing | the right thing. Only as the whole thing escalated more, he | back-paddled. | | Made me feel like he only did it to avoid bad publicity and | stuff like this will keep happening. | | Ever since, the way Replit represents itself (as the | "revolutionary" new platform) is quite off-putting for me and | I've stopped using/suggesting them. | miki123211 wrote: | They're doing the exact same thing when accessibility is | concerned. | | In my few interactions with them, they either claimed that | they had it figured out (which is not true), or they promised | that it will get fixed really soon. I've reached out to them | about it a couple years ago, and little has been done to | address the issue since then. | | Their accessibility is weird, all the modals, menus and so on | are perfectly accessible, you can see that somebody put a lot | of thought into them, but core components of their platform | (like the terminal) don't have any accessibility at all, even | though flipping one switch in the library they use would get | them 90% of the way there. | | Considering they're deep in the education space, this is a | really big issue. People might fail their classes because of | this, and it might even possibly be illegal in some | jurisdictions. If there's one sector where you really need to | do accessibility right, it's education. | ignoramous wrote: | > _[Amjad Masad] initially doubled down, saying he was doing | the right thing. Only as the whole thing escalated more, he | back-paddled._ | | Folks should be allowed to change their mind. How is that a | bad thing? Given more input / data, it only makes sense a | rational person changes their opinion / outlook. | | > _Ever since, the way Replit represents itself (as the | "revolutionary" new platform) is quite off-putting for me and | I've stopped using/suggesting them._ | | For better or worse, they're going after the next wave of | developers. Not you and I: | | " _Replit wants to build the future, and to build the future, | you don 't rebuild the old thing for the old customers. You | build something new that starts out looking like a toy, and | you build for the underserved, not just for moral reasons, | but for strategic ones. It's disruptive innovation meets the | compounding power of young users._" | | ... | | " _For example, it means not targeting experienced developers | to start, even though they 're the more valuable users today. | If they've already written their first line of code | elsewhere, they definitionally can't write their first line | of code in Replit._" | | https://archive.is/JC3Ux | woah wrote: | Didn't the CEO have some incredibly megalomaniacal tweet | where he claimed that Replit was going to replace all | software? | quickthrower2 wrote: | Funny how the mind works. I have a bad memory normally, but I | am yeah "heard of this company on HN before and it was | something not too awesome. I didn't remember the details but | the flag "something bad about X" stuck. | ZephyrBlu wrote: | Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195 | flunhat wrote: | The most concerning part about that whole interaction was this | small detail (here's the full post: | https://intuitiveexplanations.com/tech/replit/): | | In the earlier emails, Amjad Masad (the CEO) offered to hire | the intern, was pleasant, etc. And then just a few threads | later, when things turned sour, he insulted the former intern, | calling him the "most demanding intern we've ever had." | | It's deeply telling about a person's character when they pull | this kind of move -- kind & understanding one moment, negging & | insulting the next, even if it contradicts their earlier | kindness. | anm89 wrote: | Replit was recently in the news when the CEO used expensive | company lawyers to attack a an individual contributor on an open | source project to force the project to close even though they had | done nothing wrong just because it was impossible to pay the | legal fees. | | Don't support them. | plesiv wrote: | Not saying replit wasn't wrong in this (CEO apologized), but | from my point of view the story is not that clear-cut. | leaded_syrinx wrote: | Apologies don't undo a history of a mal-intent towards | employees who helped build the company. | 0des wrote: | Link? | williamstein wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195 | arcastroe wrote: | My go-to for random code snippets has always been glot.io, mostly | for the clean and immediate UI experience (no sign-in, etc) | | If I'm going to use repl.it and jump through several pages to | even get started, I might as well open an IDE instead. | b20000 wrote: | ok, so another tool to find cheap coder talent and create more | code monkeys so the cost of engineering can be brought down at | large companies. | lionfish323 wrote: | Does anyone have any thoughts on the blog post [0] linked at the | end of the announcement? Is this actually how venture capitalists | evaluate these sorts of things? That post feels like it | approaches "conspiracy theory" levels of leaps [1] about the | evolution of the product and its potential impacts from a company | whose product offering doesn't really seem to have changed or | expanded much in the past few years, and which feels from an | outsider's perspective like it's generally being left in the dust | by more modern competitors like GH's Codespaces. | | [0] https://www.notboring.co/p/replit-remix-the-internet | | [1] e.g., the CEO making vague tweets about "web3" = "Replit will | be a vortex for talent, creativity, and economic activity online. | It might become the operating system for the 21st Century, the | platform on top of which much of the internet is built, remixed | and monetized." | hermitcrab wrote: | I used Replit to build a Python battlesnake for | https://play.battlesnake.com/. It was nice and easy to get | started with. Unfortunately the latency/performance isn't | reliable enough for my battlesnake - my snake moves between about | 50 and 150 in the global league just depending on the Replit | server performance. | robbles wrote: | Are you using the default Battlesnake region? Depending on your | location and where your replit ends up hosted, switching | regions might reduce your latency a bit. | brunoqc wrote: | Does replit work well on normal phone screen? | devmunchies wrote: | They're switching from Monaco to codemirror if they haven't | already. | airocker wrote: | Is not Jupiter already on codemirror? | williamstein wrote: | Yes, Jupyter notebook has used CodeMirror for nearly a | decade. The official Jupyter notebook has never used | Monaco, but the Google version (colab) uses Monaco in order | to very nicely leverage LSP support (similar to VS Code). | There is preliminary work under way right now to switch | from CodeMirror 5 to CodeMirror 6 in the official Jupyter | project, but that's going to be significant work (see | https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/11638). | | It doesn't seem like there is much overlap between Replit | and Jupyter notebooks right now, as far as I can tell... | williamstein wrote: | They still using Monaco by default (I just signed in and | checked). For what it is worth, Monaco used to have zero | support for mobile, but recently got much better: | https://github.com/microsoft/monaco- | editor/issues/246#issuec... I tested out Code Server (vscode | via the web) on an ipad recently, and it worked surprisingly | well. | ltazmin wrote: | Yes, Replit runs on phones and tablets. You can code & run any | repl, share repls & edit with other people. We recently started | rolling out CodeMirror as the backbone of the editor and we'll | be making a ton more enhancements there. | spullara wrote: | There may be a way for you to test this. | garbagetime wrote: | How? | dang wrote: | Please don't be snarky in HN comments. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | [deleted] | TYPE_FASTER wrote: | I just tried it out of curiosity. Yes, it works pretty well on | my iPhone XR. | mlazos wrote: | I love it for just being able to run a quick snippet. I'm not | sure if the one minute interaction I give to it can be monetized. | VirusNewbie wrote: | If Repl.it comes out with a way to sync an offline mode to their | cloud offerings I will jump for joy, become a paying user, and | maybe even apply to work there. | | But cloud only is kind of a show stopper for me. | jcrites wrote: | https://github.com/features/codespaces | fxtentacle wrote: | "Replit (YC W18) Is Hiring to Bring the Next Billion Software | Creators Online" | | Yeah right, the main problem stopping people from writing python | scripts is that the one-click installer isn't convenient enough | ;) Or is it all those software developers who refuse to use a | keyboard and insist on using a smart phone touchscreen? | | Their product is a code snippet repl console. And it's not even | the best, first, fastest, or cheapest one. | | Their self-presentation to me seems so over the top that I feel | like they will turn out to be a scam. | quickthrower2 wrote: | These kinds of things are sometime useful if you need to | quickly hack on a language you don't normally use. If you don't | normally use that language then you are not used to the | install, the package system, the environment variables and | hacks you need to get it to work properly, the troubleshooting | decision trees, etc. | | I agree if python is your main bread and butter language doing | REPL locally (or debugging with VS Code) would be much nicer. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-09 23:00 UTC)