Honestly, val.town is cool and fun and I have never been able to get something up and running as quickly as I have on val.town. Once repl.it stopped allowing you to run flask apps without upgrading, I knew it was only a matter of time, when I would need to switch to a different cloud function app.
I was able to move my reference manager from repl to val.town Jan 4, 2024: Notion Reference Manager
Here is a quick friction log:
I tried to use it as an IDE (based on around 3 hours of exploration), but there were a few challenges:
- The all-scripts-on-one-page layout made it feel less like an IDE.
- There was a noticeable delay between clicking run and seeing the output.
- The auto-format code feature often didn't work as expected.
- Every save increased the version, which was a personal irritation as I prefer versions to represent actual changes.
- Sometimes, saving didn't work if I collapsed the tab group.
- For it to feel like a true script IDE, it might need code folding functionality.
On the positive side, I appreciated the TypeScript argument suggestions. So, I've been using it more as an executable pastebin. Overall, I like how compact and clean the interface is, considering how much you can do with it.