October 2018 Summaries

Repl.it has announced a successful Seed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from notable investors such as Marc Andreessen, Andrew Chen, and others, while also celebrating reaching a million users and 250,000 websites/apps shipped since launching its hosting platform. Originally conceived as a simple tool to access a REPL in any language, Repl.it has evolved in response to user demand into an all-encompassing software development platform. The company aims to democratize cloud computing, much like microcomputers did for computing, by creating a fast, reliable, and collaborative online IDE and cloud infrastructure. Their future plans include developing a multiplayer REPL, a standardized REPL protocol for adding new languages, and a distributed filesystem, alongside an innovative IDE plugin experience, with the goal of enabling more users to build businesses and deploy production software. As Repl.it continues to grow, it anticipates expanding commercialization opportunities in areas such as collaboration tools and web hosting, supported by a diverse team of industry veterans and technical experts.

A new feature was shipped that saves users time in finding and opening files, especially in larger projects. This feature allows users to access the file switcher without having the file tree visible. The file switcher can be accessed by pressing Ctrl + P (or Cmd + P on Mac), a binding chosen for its default usage in modern editors. Once in the file switcher, users can type a file name or path and the corresponding file will be displayed, with fuzzy string matching allowing partial typing to find files.