Easy code re-use and editing

[gfwilliams]

Posted at 2016-08-05 by @gfwilliams

The Puck.js KickStarter is almost over, and I'd really like to be able to use this as an opportunity to make it easier for all of Espruino's users to re-use and share code.

For Puck.js itself, I'm trying to make it easy for people who might be scared off code, so I'm thinking:

• puck-js.com will have a bunch of simple recipes (image + description + code). Code could be JS or Blockly, but will be hidden from sight initially. You'll be able to click a link to upload, or one to 'remix'
• When you upload/remix, that will pop up the Web IDE (the Chrome app if installed, or the Web Bluetooth IDE)
• You'll be able to either upload the code directly or tweak it first, then upload.
• You'd be able to save your tweaked code somewhere, and then submit it as a new 'recipe' for puck-js.com

Hopefully I'll add the same system to espruino.com too, and puck-js.com will just be the same list of recipes, but filtered on Puck.js.

I'm seeing puck-js.com as a very simple, clean list of recipes and a getting started guide - and then proper documentation would still go back to espruino.com.

So the questions really are:

• How should code be saved? I'm veering towards GitHub at the moment (maybe Gists?)
• How should documentation be saved? I'm thinking Markdown in a comment at the top of the code.
• How should code be submitted? I could use Github logins on the side, and could just have a list of links to Gists, that then got pulled into the website...
• And then images... They can't go into Gists, but I could have a way to upload thumbnails on the site.

Then there's also the question of the totally web-based stuff, like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5cp4OoSt-o

Not sure if I really want to host arbitrary HTML/JS code locally? Probably not, but at the same time these are probably the things that will really get people excited about Puck.js, so they need to be nice and easy to show off.