
HyperDev – Developer Playground for Full-Stack Web Apps - GarethX
http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2016/05/30.html
======
tghw
I'm a big fan of Fog Creek (having worked there for 7 years). But I'm a little
stumped on who this is for.

Without any persistence (Mongo, SQL, Redis, something) this is nothing more
than a toy. Right now, the forums suggest setting one up via some PAAS, which
obviates the whole "it's only one step" thing. Presumably persistence is on
its way, as this is just a beta.

Persistence aside, it's still lightweight for an experienced developer. All of
the things listed in Joel's "look what you don't have to do list" exist
because they are good practice. In fact, 16 years ago Joel wrote about the 12
things that you need to make good software[0], which, coincidentally, includes
almost everything on that convenience list.

On the other hand, if you're just learning to code, not having to provision a
server or deal with Git isn't really fixing the hard part. Heroku and GitHub
are making that easier and easier. HyperDev drops you right into an active
NodeJS project without explaining what package.json is, where you define your
views, or even what views are.

This leaves it serving a very narrow demographic, which is often the problem
with these sorts of tools. Hopefully Fog Creek will be able to make it more
broadly appealing before the shine wears off.

[0]
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html)

~~~
genericacct
Even without persistence it has its uses. I have a couple of proxy services on
heroku that would fit, for example.

~~~
konnichimade
And I made a Skype bot. Persistence would improve some things about it but it
works just fine without it.

------
colevscode
Cool tech, fun toy! I hope it is successful. I think Joel should focus on it's
toy-like nature, and potential as a learning tool, rather than trying to build
this into a production grade tool.

I spent years building tools for this market between professional devs and
non-developers. (Backlift.com and then Brace.io) It's really tough. Most
people learning to code are trying to gain transferrable skills that can help
them land a job. For them, learning git is a fruitful tangent along the path
to shipping. Those that aren't interested in building those transferrable
skills probably don't self-identify as developers. Making developer tools for
non-developers is tough.

~~~
tomphoolery
> Cool tech, fun toy! I hope it is successful. I think Joel should focus on
> it's toy-like nature, and potential as a learning tool, rather than trying
> to build this into a production grade tool.

Agreed, and I think the latter part of the post (the "FAQ") indicates that
Joel doesn't see this as a deployment strategy for professional developers...

"Listen, this is not the future of all software development. Professional
software development teams will continue to use professional, robust tools
like Git and that’s great. But it’s surprising how just having continuous
merging and reliable Undo solves the “version control” problem for all kinds
of simple coding problems. And it really does create an insanely addictive
form of collaboration that supercharges your team productivity."

Basically it's a platform that makes a major trade-off: practically zero
accountability in exchange for maximum usability. To us professionals, this
doesn't seem like a worthwhile choice. However, to those non-programmers or
budding programmers which I believe this product is geared towards, it's a
step in the right direction. This feels like it wants to be the "Google Docs"
of programming.

~~~
triptych
I could see this as a great tool for doing coding interviews. You get instant
feedback to see if it works, and you can share the results with others almost
as a code resume of sorts.

------
Yahivin
We're on the front page of some major sites so things are blowing up a little
bit, but we should have it sorted out soon!

Thanks for your patience!

\- A frantic HyperDev developer

~~~
kfrz
I'm excited to see this in fruition. I don't know how much of a concern this
is but [https://hyperdev.com/about/](https://hyperdev.com/about/) loads an
attachment (mime/octet-stream). I've never seen this behavior before so I
didn't download it. Win 10, FF 46.0.1

~~~
Yahivin
Oops, good catch, a CloudFront misconfiguration pushing the fix now.

------
marcuskaz
Pretty cool, the idea looks similar to `now` by Zeit[1]

Platform as a service has gone from click to get a server that needs
configuring (AWS), to get a server already configured (Heroku), and now to
write code and get URL without even needing to think about servers

[1]: [https://zeit.co/](https://zeit.co/)

~~~
hackaflocka
Could someone please help me understand why I would use Hyperdev over say
JSbin or JSfiddle (if I were only using html/javascript/css)?

Also, would Hyperdev be capable of PHP, MySQL?

~~~
tomjen3
Because this allows you to run server side code.

------
atrudeau
I would be interested if I could

1) host this myself. Something like apt-get install hyperdev.

2) have an integrated SQL database in the runtime. Concept of migrations
should be known by the runtime.

3) have a one click deploy option that synced everything to a remote runtime,
be it on my own servers or hosted by a 3rd party. Syncing to a runtime with
older schema should automatically run migrations.

~~~
tghw
1) Check out Meteor. It's very similar and can be self hosted.
[https://www.meteor.com/](https://www.meteor.com/)

2) You can use your favorite Node SQL package for that. Yeah, the DB has to be
hosted somewhere else, but that's getting pretty easy if you're using PAAS
services.

3) Yeah, that'd be nice.

------
alecdbrooks
I like the theme—I'm guessing it's supposed to be reminiscent of early Mac OS
and HyperCard? That seems to fit HyperDev's goal of getting up and running
quickly so you can enjoy building something.

------
gregshap
"Looks like we're over capacity... [Get notified when we're back]"

Wish the site wasn't down, but I like this as a way to handle the blow up
during launch.

~~~
tedmiston
> [Get Notified When We're Back]

The email notification during overload is a very thoughtful feature. Awesome
UX enhancement especially for a dev service.

------
mostafah
I see the big potential in having an always-on development environment in the
cloud. It would enable better collaboration. It also enables features not
possible with in the old way, like easier deployment, ready-made persistence,
moving back in time, … .

But for me the problem with them is that the text editor is not Emacs. I guess
a lot of developers who are somewhat experienced have similar attachment to
their editors and scripts. And it’s not just an emotional one: it directly
affects productivity.

Not trying to be negative here, but this is really an issue.

~~~
konnichimade
vi master race! _shakes fist_

------
syastrov
“What if I literally type ‘DELETE * FROM USERS’ on my way to typing ‘WHERE
id=9283’, do I lose all my user data?”

Nope, you'll just get an SQL syntax error.

------
avip
I feel as a developer I have a personal debt to Joel. So first I wish him and
FC best of luck with any endeavor.

It's unclear to me which crowd this tool is useful for. I'm usually using
cloud9 for the "deploy a toy now" use case. Between wix, Heroku, google apps,
c9.io, github pages, jsfiddle, ngrok... which unoccupied niche is left for
HyperDev?

~~~
collyw
Sounds like it would be useful for prototyping / proof of concept stuff (in
other word it will end up in production).

~~~
avip
"Prototyping" is done by developers. We have many existing tools for that use
case.

~~~
collyw
This still saves a ton of setup time.

------
bcheung
I really like the concept of this. Especially with node/react I found learning
webpack and setting everything up takes FOREVER.

Unfortunately, platforms like these always seem ridiculously overpriced when
compared to a bare metal dedicated server. I'd be curious to see how it is
priced.

~~~
Cthulhu_
There should be plenty of bootstrap projects for node/react to get up and
running quickly, e.g. [http://yeoman.io/](http://yeoman.io/)

~~~
bcheung
I'll have to check it out. I remember back when I was doing Angular I looked
through several and none of them were even close for what I wanted to do. I
think React is much more standardized.

------
beefsack
Cool idea, but it feels a little like using FTP to develop in a live
environment. The pitch seems to be saying SCM and deployment tools are bad
things, but they're valuable and useful tools.

~~~
jimbokun
Joel made very clear he is not saying anything of the sort. He is saying they
are very useful tools for professional development, but sometimes you just
want to type some code and see what it does.

------
rajington
I know it's down right now but I used this a couple of weeks ago and it was
very powerful. Well worth bookmarking and checking out later.

------
_Marak_
Could't get anything to load.

Got a message saying Hyperdev has hit capacity and to try again later.

:-\

~~~
nuggien
same issue for me

------
modeless
Nobody mentioned AppJet yet? AppJet was exactly the same product, 10 years
ago! It was awesome and I hope this product sticks around longer than AppJet
did (pivoted into EtherPad and then acquihired by Google).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppJet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppJet)

~~~
ianand
+1 Had the same thought when I saw it. AppJet was awesome.

------
NKCSS
I just checked my own site and noticed I was retargeted with a HyperDev ad; I
guess they are agressively pushing this?

[http://i.imgur.com/icNiRy1.png](http://i.imgur.com/icNiRy1.png)

------
oneweekwonder
Ok they are down and I did read the announcement.

How does this compare to c9.io?

~~~
benologist
I haven't had a chance to test HyperDev extensively cause it's a bit early and
unstable, but c9 is like a full-fledged traditional IDE supporting anything
you might program while a full Ubuntu virtual machine can install anything
your project needs. C9 is open source and can be deployed on your own
hardware.

HyperDev is specifically for web stuff and really slickly optimized around
that handling deployment and everything.

------
peternicky
I am getting a 502 message on your about page (hyperdev)...really frustrating
that I get the over capacity message two weeks after signing up for the
private beta, I would have thought this would have been resolved by now
especially with this new press.

------
rootforce
It also supports python.

[http://support.hyperweb.space/t/server-side-python-proof-
of-...](http://support.hyperweb.space/t/server-side-python-proof-of-
concept/94)

------
kristianp
One more thing...

...is a reference to:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenote#.22One_more_thing......](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenote#.22One_more_thing....22)

------
rad_gruchalski
I'm trying to see what's here:
[https://hyperdev.com/about/?utm_source=fcblog&utm_medium=ref...](https://hyperdev.com/about/?utm_source=fcblog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=HyperDev%20Launch)
but all I get is:

{ "status": "Error", "statusCode": 503, "statusDetail": "GetPort: Application
failed to start on container cosmic-panther" }

~~~
GarethX
Sorry about that - a lot of the same detail on that page is included in the
blog post at [https://hyperdev.com/blog/hyperdev-open-
beta/](https://hyperdev.com/blog/hyperdev-open-beta/)

------
83457
"Oh, and it’s free."

~~~
jkarneges
This is concerning as free tools often don't make economic sense. Even more
concerning is how casually Joel treats this issue in the Q&A section. He
should know better.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Worse than not making economic sense, it opens the door wide for malicious
users - I'm sure some guy is already working on setting up JS-based bitcoin
miners that just use up these free, no-login servers' CPU capacity, or set up
malware sites, child porn hosting, you name it.

The barriers - login, mainly - aren't there to annoy users.

~~~
benologist
I was looking at issues on the c9.io github yesterday and saw someone
complaining that he was banned ... after running a minecraft server, slack
bots and more lol.

~~~
mappu
[https://github.com/c9/core/issues/304](https://github.com/c9/core/issues/304)

------
esafwan
Seems like an awesome tool. For all those pros who are wondering who will use
this tool. Let me tell this, this is an invaluable tool to teach programming
for web without scaring them with all complexities. And the learners still
have a url where they can see things in near realtime.

------
chaostheory
The biggest potential I see with this is with helping people initially learn
to program. imo the biggest hurdles with programing aren't programming itself;
instead it's getting the proper setup (installing x, y, and z and configuring
a, b, c properly)

------
misnome
Looks interesting - I'm not a node user myself but will probably take another
look once other languages are added. Might be useful for prototyping.

I also found refreshingly honest: > This is still a beta so don’t ask me how
many 9’s. You can have all the 8’s you want.

------
g4nt1
The names looks alot like HyperDex
([http://hyperdex.org/](http://hyperdex.org/)). I found it weird that the
HyperDex DB was pivoting to full stacked Web Apps.

------
j_s
Interesting to see someone willing to trust strangers in their containers.

------
fencepost
So for folks who've used both, how does this compare to CodePen?

~~~
jordanlev
1\. Codepen is front-end only, whereas hyperdev runs back-end code as well
(node.js)

2\. Codepen gives you 1 html, 1 css, and 1 js file per pen... hyperdev lets
you have as many front-end and back-end files as you want. (Technically you
can have multiple files in a codepen by linking to them, but it's not the
primary use-case and is not as in-your-face as hyperdev is).

------
kevinyun
That was a fast beta invite! Got errors and looking forward to when it's more
stable. Curious about pricing -- if this is freemium set up like heroku, will
gladly dive deeper in

------
ykumar6
I think the interesting opportunity here is can bring this real-time workflow
to professional software teams that use git and micro-services?

------
fiatjaf
As Heroku starts to put away free users, this will help a lot of people.

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dang
We changed the URL from [http://blog.fogcreek.com/announcing-hyperdev-the-
developer-p...](http://blog.fogcreek.com/announcing-hyperdev-the-developer-
playground-for-building-fullstack-web-apps-fast/) to Joel's blog post. We can
change it back if people prefer, but it gives more background and is a fun
read and there shouldn't be two articles about the same project on the front
page.

------
zxcvcxz
Whenever I use these services they are pretty much never as responsive as a
local editor, which is to be expected I guess, but I don't see how this could
replace someones dev environment if they're a serious programmer. Big
companies are going to want to have a lot more control over the backend and
how things are wired together. People just learning will want to know how to
actually make things work and not just have their hand held the whole time.
For small freelance work this looks like it cold be good, but even then you
have to learn the "HyperDev" work flow.

I just build and deploy everything in containers using Vim as my editor.

~~~
Yahivin
There isn't anything special about the HyperDev work flow. You can take any
project that runs in HyperDev and `git push heroku master` and have it running
on Heroku, or run it locally in a similar manner. HyperDev gives you an
environment where you can update and deploy your code without having to set
anything up to get started. You can collaborate with anyone by just sending
them a link. There will always be a place for more custom environments, but we
hope that HyperDev can serve 99% of developers and people who write code on
computers.

~~~
jakubp
Hmm. I don't know about serving "99% of developers" without support for at
least top 10 languages/frameworks, catering for enterprise (which is, in my
country, like 50% or more of all jobs for software devs), and an IDE that has
at least the most basic of features... but most of all, I do not feel like the
blog post or the site itself communicates in any way the two most important
feelings I'd like to get as a developer: 1) I'm in control if I need to be, 2)
I understand what's going on. These are of course related, but I have neither
the sense that I can control things here, nor that I understand what's so
special about this. For working alone my own dev machine is better in every
regard with the exception of being able to code away from that machine; for
working together I would never let a 3rd party provide glue and choice of
architecture, security etc. anyway, since anything bigger would likely be a
more serious (not more frivolous) endeavour... what am I not getting?

------
nikon
About as useful as their "language" Wasabi
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01b.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01b.html).

