[kampsduac]

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]

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

[harikb]

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]

>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

>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

>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). Do you remember exact steps or do you have a link to debug? You can always email me with bugs or feedback: [e-mail]

>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.

[harikb]

Thank you for the reply! I will give your suggestions a shot and get back to you.

[kilroy_jones]

I teach the IB and IGCSE curricula and have used repl.it quite a bit in the last few years. What sort of materials are you looking for? Coverage of Python, Java, and C++ at the middle/high school level or smaller one-off projects with libraries like Pygame and Flask?

[amasad]

That's awesome. More the former. Can you email [e-mail]?