I looked at the documentation and didn’t really find something easily

[pbiggar]

A user says:

So here comes my “first look” experience:

The first thing I did was try a hello world. It worked flawlessly, and I got the “wow” feeling. Because to do this in other frameworks or languages would require a lot of boilerplate and other kinds of annoying stuff. So great work there! The only thing here would be to describe in your tutorial that you “right click then select New HTTP Handler”. It’s not a big thing, I figured it out in a second but I think it’s a good idea to make things as clear as possible to really help new users get the same “wow” feeling without having to think much.

The second thing I did was to try and make a function, just a simple factorial. Here is where I first encountered a problem. So I looked at the documentation and didn’t really find something easily. On the documentation I would like a chapter under “Language” called “Functions” or something because “Functions” are a functionality on the canvas and I think plenty of new users will try and understand how everything works by just trying stuff and then looking at the documentation for answers. Like trying “Functions” then going to documentation and finding a chapter called “Functions”.

The third thing I did was follow the tutorial you had under getting started. This was good one which showed some of the main parts. However, one thing I encountered was with the datastore. There is no straight forward way to delete a created datastore. You basically have to in the case of a dangling datastore (you don’t use it but it contains stuff):

1. Make a REPL or HTTP handler and clear the data.
2. Un reference the datastore.
3. Delete the datastore.
   I think this can be done by simple allowing user to “clear + delete” the datastore if it is not referenced anywhere.

Some general opinions and feelings:

1. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m coding much, it’s rather restrictive.
2. There is no clear way to organise all the “boxes” in the canvas. Multiple pages in a hierarchy would be cool.
3. If you click on a REPL, a lot of texts and stuff comes up which is annoying, see attached image.
4. I would like to be able to resize my boxes on the canvas.
5. I would like a desktop IDE.

My first experience was pretty great, I just wanted to let you know about these “first look” thoughts because I’d forget about them otherwise and I think it can help even though it’s still just private beta.