
Show HN: Goodbye Old Editor – Reinventing coding with the cloud - friendcode
https://friendco.de/
======
klibertp
After taking a look I want to ask about a few features I would expect to say
goodbye to my "old" editor (I actually just migrated from VIM to Emacs). Are
they there, or are they going to be included?

    
    
        - auto completion, file names, var names, classes and functions, words in general etc. (like in: vim - omnicomplete, emacs: auto-complete)
    
        - fill column marker (v: colorcolumn, e: many, fill-column-indicator)
    
        - code outline (v: TagBar, e: Speedbar)
    
        - refactoring support, rename var/fun/class (many options)
    
        - go to definition (for Python v: python-mode, e: elpy; or generically with ctags, etags)
    
        - comment region (v: NERDCommenter, e: comment-region)
    
        - declare and insert snippets (v: vim-snipmate, e: yasnippet and others)
    
        - rectangular selection and operations (v: Ctrl-v, e: C-x r ... or rect-mark)
    
        - find file in project (fuzzy matching optional) (v: Command-T, e: find-file-in-project, ifind, others)
    
        - find in files (v: :(vim)grep or other, e: lgrep or multiple others)
    
        - change/set surrounding "'([{ chars (v: surround, e: wrap-region or (somewhat) paredit)
    

And probably many others I don't remember now.

I don't want to sound like I'm saying the product is a bad idea or that what
we have now is sufficient and we don't need new things. I'm honestly very used
to these features and they make me more productive; if I was a hobbyist, I
could switch to less featureful editor right now, but for a professional your
productivity determines your income for the large part. So, while I like the
idea of in-browser editors, I cannot use them unless they have the features I
need. If they are in different places then ok, but not if they are lacking.

~~~
WayneDB
Are you sure that you like the idea of in-browser editors? The only feature
that I see as useful is the "zero deployment/any device" and I can't imagine
that feature coming in handy very often.

What else do you like about them?

If you like vim or emacs - the Cons seem to far outweigh the one Pro that I
can see for these types of editors:

    
    
      - Online only.
      - Client and service back-end usually not open source.
      - Far less robust, feature-wise.
      - Limited to using these for languages that their back-end supports.
      - Limited by browser technology. For instance:
      Can I break those tabs out to a new window? 
      How well does that perform? 
      Can I middle-click a document-tab to close it? 
      Does it integrate well with the rest of the 
      programs running on my operating system?
    

To the folks at friendco.de: Sorry for being negative. It's nothing personal -
I just prefer native over web for my applications and I'm curious as to what
people find to be good about web apps besides the one Pro that I mentioned.

~~~
klibertp
Well, if everything else was equal and all features implemented the "zero
deployment/any device" would be a great thing, no? As I said I like the idea,
not current implementations.

Personally I would use it - and even if it had only a fraction of
functionality I mentioned - for remote pair programming. It's so hard to make
people feel comfortable with Emacs/Vim+screen/tmux!

As an aside, I think that an online editor with scripting capability would
quickly catch up to native editors in terms of features.

~~~
chr1
Well actually all the online editors have awesome scripting capability via
javascript:)

> \- rectangular selection and operations (v: Ctrl-v, e: C-x r ... or rect-
> mark)

Ace (cloud9 editor which friendCode uses) have pretty good support for sublime
text style multiple selections, (with ctrl-alt-arrow keys) so emacs or vim
style should be easy to implement. The main problem is that there are oly a
few people who use online editors, so most of this things are not implemented
yet.

------
michaelmior
This looks pretty cool and I'm going to check it out, but I'm not signing up
with GitHub since you ask for access to my private repos by default. Given
that I use GitHub for my day job, I'm not really comfortable giving a service
I've never heard of access to our code base. It would be great if this was
opt-in. (e.g. ask for my public repos now and then ask me later about private
ones)

~~~
friendcode
Thanks, happy to hear you like it.

We don't import your private repositories as of now, only your public ones.

I think you did good to point this out, we'll make it more clear and visible
in the future.

We're only six months into our adventure so far and we're in beta, but we're
definitely improving.

And your feedback is very helpful. Thanks for that

------
davidandgoliath
Anyone know of a self-hosted variant of this? I'd kill for the ability to toss
some file on a webserver & use it to edit files locally..

~~~
martin-adams
Cloud9 IDE? <https://github.com/ajaxorg/cloud9/>

~~~
davidandgoliath
Thanks! Will check it out.

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yesimahuman
Nice work! Have you played with Koding.com at all? This is very similar and
seems to be a space that is heating up. I will definitely give this a shot.

One quick piece of feedback: some of the grammar felt strange. I'm assuming
you aren't native english speakers? No problem, I'm sure someone can help you
polish that later.

~~~
friendcode
Thanks. We know of Koding, we haven't spoke with their team though.

It seems like coding is really focusing on it's social features and wants to
become the "facebook for developers".

I can't condemn that, but I think there is more value to be built, by
focussing on improving the coding experience and it's simplicity.

We're a two man team, I'm a native english speaker, but taking care of the
backend side of things I don't always have the time to perfect the grammar
mistakes my co-founder makes.

He's french by the way, and I think he still does a pretty good job :)

Thanks for pointing that out, we'll definitely improve that when things calm
down a bit

------
__xtrimsky
Few things needed for me before I even consider the change:

PS: I am a PHP developer using Netbeans

\- Autocomplete (for function names, vars and methods)

\- Control + Click on a var/function/method opens the file where that is
located and bring you there

\- Also would be easier if it had Dropbox/Google Drive support, I am cheap so
I don't pay github, I find it too expensive.

------
hallowtech
It would be nice if I didn't have to set up _another_ repo. Integrating with
GitHub or BitBucket would be preferred (be backed by, not just import). That
said, I wouldn't actually use it since GitHub lets you edit individual files
through the UI. Just an observation. The rest looks nice though.

~~~
friendcode
Right now, we integrate both with GitHub as a "Repository provider" and Heroku
as a PaaS.

If you connect your Github account we'll import your GitHub repositories.

And we do have a primitive and slightly awkward way of pushing back to your
github repository. That will be improved in the coming days. To make it more
obvious and easier.

Thanks for pointing that out. We want to integrate as well as possible with
current existing services.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel regarding code hosting and we want to
focus on what makes us different.

Hope that answers your question.

------
shrikrishna
While running the sample nodejs code, it opened a virtual terminal with the
message "Building application in a new virtual machine" - Are you actually
creating a new virtual machine for every app that is run? Isn't that resource-
consuming?

~~~
friendcode
Yes, each app is run in a new virtual machine.

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codereflection
Just curious, are you guys building the FriendCode app by using FriendCode?

------
dreyfiz
This looks great. When will you shut up and start taking my money? I'm worried
of getting too attached, that this beautiful piece of work looks like it has
no business model.

~~~
friendcode
Thanks, happy to hear that you like it. We do have a business model and
multiple possible revenue streams. The most obvious one being freemium. We're
in beta right now, so it made sense for us to keep it free during beta. We
will be rolling out pricing as soon as we leave beta.

It'll always be free for individuals, but we'll have paid versions for larger
teams and companies.

------
friendcode
I just wanted to let you guys know that there are a few issues with the
execution system due to the load we got from HN.

We're on it right now.

------
codereflection
Error 500 on redirect back from Github login.

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jackmaney
This looks interesting. Is there--or will there be--any kind of integration
with GitHub, SourceForge, et al?

~~~
friendcode
Happy to hear you like it.

We do integrate with Github and Heroku as of now.

Expect this integration to involve over time and we'll also integrate with
other services (Amazon AWS, DotCloud ...)

------
bsimpson
I'd like to see the pricing structure before I give you any data (including my
Google/FB/GH credentials).

------
alpb
Have you seen <https://koding.com/> ?

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abhinai
I love the concept. You may want to fix the language autocomplete during sign
up.

~~~
friendcode
Thanks, we'll look into that and get it fixed ASAP

------
james33
What is different about this from Cloud9 (genuinely interested in the answer)?

~~~
friendcode
First of all Cloud9 is a very good solution, they are the initial pioneers in
cloud coding, and they built some good technology that we contribute to (and
use small parts of).

We really try to focus on simplicity and extensibility.

We're trying a few different approaches, one of them being providing a whole
network besides the code editor itself, so people can share plugins, build
teams, find freelancers (that kind of stuff).

Cloud9 is very good, we're just about 6 months old and a two man team, so
we're exploring things and trying to innovate.

Hope that answers your question.

~~~
james33
Thanks, that does answer it! Good luck :)

------
g3rald
That's incredible. I've been trying all morning, and do not stop to amaze me.

~~~
friendcode
Thanks, I'm happy that you like it :)

~~~
g3rald
Hey man, i just found a problem with Ruby. When i run the demo code with
sinatra, tries to download dependencies with Bundler, i got this error:

Installing dependencies using Bundler version 1.3.2 Running: bundle install
--without development:test --path vendor/bundle --binstubs vendor/bundle/bin
--deployment The source :rubygems is deprecated because HTTP requests are
insecure. Please change your source to '<https://rubygems.org> if possible, or
'<http://rubygems.org> if not. You are trying to install in deployment mode
after changing your Gemfile. Run `bundle install` elsewhere and add the
updated Gemfile.lock to version control. You have added to the Gemfile: *
source: rubygems repository <http://rubygems.org/> * sinatra (= 1.1.0) * thin
! ERROR: Failed to install gems via Bundler.

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yfaber
;)

