> > Am I the only one who thinks these runnable code widgets are totally > useless? I'm curious as to how users interact with them in the real > world. I bet 99% of them either ignore it or just press the button and see > the default output. The ones who probably interact with it the most are > going to be the same users that are going to download and run the language > anyway. They displace huge amounts of real estate for basically no > practical value. > > To me the landing page to a programming language is really a nice backdrop > for four things, A giant button where I can go download what I want because > I'm lazy and just click on the top google hit. Another prominent link to > the Julia package ecosystem because I'm lazy and typing "julia" AND > "packages" is way too much work (haskell did a survey a while back, if I > remember correctly a majority of users to the front page fell under this > category). In addition, enough background information to get people to > click on the manual and a nice community / development activity section so > I can see that things are happening. Please, please don't make me scroll > past a huge useless web 2.0 header to get to what I actually want (again, > lazy). I like the Racket, Haskell, and OCaml websites as I think they are > utilitarian but actually useful. I agree that the Rust site is a bit too > minimalist. I absolutely hate the python website. The R website is just > laughably bad. Altogether, I don't think PL's set a high bar in this > regard. > > -Jake >
No you're not the only one ;) Unfortunately http://forio.com/julia/repl/ doesn't work anymore, in my opinion it was excellent and a link to it on the front page would be enough. For everyone who doesn't already know, I've uploaded a preview of my homepage revamp here: http://julialang.herokuapp.com/ If you like I can use that page for a sandbox for ideas that come up during this discussion.
