
Tonic is now RunKit, a part of Stripe - tolmasky
http://blog.runkit.com/2016/09/13/tonic-is-now-runkit-a-part-of-stripe.html
======
skissane
Other things called "runkit":

* a PHP module - [http://php.net/manual/en/book.runkit.php](http://php.net/manual/en/book.runkit.php)

* a Swift wrapper for Grand Central Dispatch - [https://cocoapods.org/pods/RunKit](https://cocoapods.org/pods/RunKit)

* an Objective-J animation library - [https://github.com/austinsarner/RunKit](https://github.com/austinsarner/RunKit)

Of course, there are only a finite number of possible names, especially when
you limit yourself to names that are brief and meaningful, which makes name
collisions almost inevitable. And maybe the above items are all obscure enough
that it doesn't matter (I had heard of the first before, due to my past life
as a PHP developer, but the other two I only found by searching)

~~~
dandr01d
From the title I assumed RunKit was a fitness-related iOS SDK.

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tolmasky
Hi everyone, I'm a part of the Ton-err RunKit team and would be more than
happy to answer any questions!

~~~
tobr
This might not be the feedback you were hoping for, but the new name is
similar to a very juvenile word in Swedish (and possibly/probably in Norwegian
and other Scandinavian languages). I guess it's too late, but I would probably
recommend changing it if possible.

Edit: Not sure why this is getting downvoted. I'm only pointing this out to
help.

~~~
msvan
As a native Swedish speaker, it didn't even cross my mind until you mentioned
it. I think it's fine.

~~~
tobr
Maybe it's not as bad as I first thought. The capitalized K breaks the word up
- it was only the URL that jumped out at me.

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erlich
Tonic is seriously cool and the long-term vision would be amazing for Node
development however...

> Stripe decided to take a bet on our vision and our team

I feel confident to make a prediction that Tonic will eventually ride off into
the sunset.

After seeing what happened to Parse, I sadly feel this is going to end the
same way. If a company as large as Facebook could not keep Parse going, how
will Stripe manage.

This is a good acquihire for Stripe, and a new opportunity for someone else to
make a web repl.

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s0l1dsnak3123
First time I've heard of RunKit. I've used Jupyter in the past to do a similar
thing (minus the API stuff which is very cool). What does RunKit provide that
Jupyter doesn't?

~~~
tolmasky
Hi s0l1dsnak3123,

You might have not heard of us because we used to be named Tonic ;) There are
a number of different factors that differentiate us from Jupyter, but we have
of course taken a ton of inspiration from them. The data science crowd
including iPython, Mathematica, etc have pioneered a development style that I
hope see make its way into "normal" programming. One of the best resources is
a pretty in-depth blog post we wrote about what's going on under the hood
here: [http://blog.runkit.com/2015/09/10/time-traveling-in-
node.js-...](http://blog.runkit.com/2015/09/10/time-traveling-in-node.js-
notebooks.html)

But, to give a quick overview:

1\. One of the original driving goals when we started working on RunKit was to
completely eliminate friction in using other people's code. So what we did was
install every permutation of every version of every package for node. You can
even require two versions at once and compare them:
[https://runkit.com/tolmasky/api-diff-
example](https://runkit.com/tolmasky/api-diff-example) . This has lead to many
interesting uses that aren't possible with other notebooks. For example, many
people use us for filing bugs, because its kind of the dream: you're not
filing a bug, you're filing a computer and environment with an undeniable
reproduction, that the reviewer can easily test (what happens if I change node
version? what happens if I change module version, etc etc).

2\. As listed in the blog post above, we've spent a tremendous amount of time
on the problem of determinism, in an attempt to "unify" the REPL and file
environments. Basically, RunKit notebooks read top to bottom, _just_ like a
file, and we guarantee that if you take the contents of a notebooks and run it
in normal node, it should behave exactly the same. For example, no
asynchronous events should be first in-between consecutive cells - this is
really important in asynchronous programming. To be able to deliver on this
guarantee we invested heavily on "time traveling" \-- when you edit a cell in
the past, the ENTIRE virtual machine is rewound, files you had deleted are
restored, etc (again, more info in the blog post if you find this
interesting).

Happy to answer any other questions, apologies for the rambling, haven't
gotten much sleep!

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grinich
Is there a reason why RunKit isn't open source?

PS: does this mean Ross now works for Stripe... again? :P reply

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diggan
If someone wants to see a runnable demo, I've created one about one year ago,
that maps the bicycle stations of Barcelona
[https://runkit.com/victorb/bicing](https://runkit.com/victorb/bicing)

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grav
In other news, Wingdong is now Bombom, a part of Jiive

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joshmanders
Congrats RunKit team! I've always played with npm modules before I actually
started using them thanks to you guys.

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patates
I can't begin to tell how wonderful is the thing you've come up with. However,
I would really like to be able to

a) host it on my own server as an open source app

b) pay for it

I think it's in the human nature to ignore the users who doesn't _explicitly_
pay you and I'd be rather protected by an off-the-cloud version or being able
to say "you have a responsibility towards your customers" if and when the time
comes for a post titled "so long and thanks for all the fish".

edit: Or... Well... You know, if and when the site is down. It's not just me,
right?

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JMiao
Congrats, Ross and Francisco! I was curious about what you two were up to,
which led me to Tonic two weeks ago. You guys move quickly! ;)

