Looks like a much needed upgrade to Learn X in Y minutes which, back in 2014-2015, was one of my favorite sites and introduced me to all kinds of interesting languages and ideas. Another great resource is Try It Online which has 681 languages you can run!
I think it’s important to provide not only the playgrounds, but the actual interactive guides. “Learn X in Y minutes” is a great source for these, at least for languages that don’t have their own author-provided tutorials (like Bash or C).
Writing interactive tutorials for libraries and CLI tools is another niche that deserves attention. Take a look at the curl guide, for example, it’s so much better with interactive examples.
The only thing that bothers me is that I seem to be the only person willing to write these interactive guides :)
I agree — I always figured that Learn X in Y Minutes was more useful as a quick reference guide for languages and tools that you were already loosely familiar with than for directly learning new tools.
This tool that you’ve created here definitely nails the interactive learning part better, but the primary fear that I have in recommending this to new learners is that it will eventually lock down increasing portions of accessible content in the effort to commercialize and monetize. I totally get that this tool is a demonstrative usecase for your more widely applicable underlying commercial service; I just wonder if there’s at least some assurance that you can give with regards to the continued usability of the site.
With that said, this tool that you’ve made is fantastic. Thank you for building and contributing it to the commons for others to freely benefit. It’s especially neat that you can play with things beyond common programming languages and I’m exceptionally impressed by how quick and responsive it is.
Thank you for the detailed feedback, Haneef! I’m glad you find the guides useful.
I have no plans to monetize the content. The “Try X in Y minutes” section of the site will be available for free (and without sign up) as long as it’s financially viable.
Thank you. When I want to evaluate 2 2 + in Factor (because I often forget what two plus two is, although that’s another story), Attempt This Online knows to autoload the math library, which Try It Online doesn’t.
This is a laudable project. The content is well written and I think the approach to the material makes sense for most of the languages listed (at least the ones with which I am already familiar). However, codeapi in its current incarnation does not expose type errors. In some languages, this is probably fine. But, specifically for TypeScript (which I believe is on the roadmap), it will be difficult to demonstrate its value over JavaScript since whatever type errors one might be trying to demonstrate that TypeScript can guard against are skipped without warning and the code is run anyway.
Looks like a much needed upgrade to Learn X in Y minutes which, back in 2014-2015, was one of my favorite sites and introduced me to all kinds of interesting languages and ideas. Another great resource is Try It Online which has 681 languages you can run!
I think it’s important to provide not only the playgrounds, but the actual interactive guides. “Learn X in Y minutes” is a great source for these, at least for languages that don’t have their own author-provided tutorials (like Bash or C).
Writing interactive tutorials for libraries and CLI tools is another niche that deserves attention. Take a look at the curl guide, for example, it’s so much better with interactive examples.
The only thing that bothers me is that I seem to be the only person willing to write these interactive guides :)
I agree — I always figured that Learn X in Y Minutes was more useful as a quick reference guide for languages and tools that you were already loosely familiar with than for directly learning new tools.
This tool that you’ve created here definitely nails the interactive learning part better, but the primary fear that I have in recommending this to new learners is that it will eventually lock down increasing portions of accessible content in the effort to commercialize and monetize. I totally get that this tool is a demonstrative usecase for your more widely applicable underlying commercial service; I just wonder if there’s at least some assurance that you can give with regards to the continued usability of the site.
With that said, this tool that you’ve made is fantastic. Thank you for building and contributing it to the commons for others to freely benefit. It’s especially neat that you can play with things beyond common programming languages and I’m exceptionally impressed by how quick and responsive it is.
Thank you for the detailed feedback, Haneef! I’m glad you find the guides useful.
I have no plans to monetize the content. The “Try X in Y minutes” section of the site will be available for free (and without sign up) as long as it’s financially viable.
Related is Attempt This Online
Thank you. When I want to evaluate
2 2 +in Factor (because I often forget what two plus two is, although that’s another story), Attempt This Online knows to autoload the math library, which Try It Online doesn’t.This is a laudable project. The content is well written and I think the approach to the material makes sense for most of the languages listed (at least the ones with which I am already familiar). However, codeapi in its current incarnation does not expose type errors. In some languages, this is probably fine. But, specifically for TypeScript (which I believe is on the roadmap), it will be difficult to demonstrate its value over JavaScript since whatever type errors one might be trying to demonstrate that TypeScript can guard against are skipped without warning and the code is run anyway.
Yeah, I cut some corners specifically with TypeScript. Will add type checking as soon as someone decides to work on a “Try X” guide for TypeScript.