[typon]

Weird to see you downvoted on a forum called "Hacker" News. Who would actually use repl.it to build apps as opposed to the traditional way of having your text editor + compilers installed on a machine you own? I think repl.it is great for prototyping or teaching, but it is NOT the "best place to build your apps". I would doubt repl.it engineers even use it to design their software.

[onion2k]

I think repl.it is great for prototyping...

aka hacking on an app, like people who read Hacker News might do.

[disown]

You see this with all "ad" posts. There are outrageously positive comments, someone who works on the project magically appears in the thread and are happy to answer your questions, there are bunch of anecdotal "ads", etc.

So many of these threads feel like a team of "social media workers" are manipulating it.

In most threads, HN hates centralization, loves privacy and loves personal control. In ad related threads, they love centralization, have no care for privacy and love giving up more control.

[nl]

What could be more hacker-like than managing to string together a set of technologies like web browsers, HTTP/WebSockets and containers to let people develop apps?

If people can build apps on Google Forms + IFTT/Zapier or on Bubble.is etc then an entire programming environment plus database seems like it should be enough to build things on too.

[sergioro]

Yeah, they seem to be a good place to build apps, but certainly not better than my local dev environment where I have total control over my packages and commands. E.g. some of these are restricted or not even supported in repl.it: sudo, dnf/apt-get, Vim plugins

[tangert]

Who would actually use repl.it to build apps as opposed to the traditional way of having your text editor + compilers installed on a machine you own?

a lot of people, including replit engineers + designers (like myself) :)