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After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

(techcrunch.com)
56 points toomanyrichies | 8 comments | 05 Oct 25 23:02 UTC | HN request time: 1.023s | source | bottom
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sincerely ◴[06 Oct 25 00:39 UTC] No.45486558[source]▶
>Rather than becoming defensive, Masad and his team owned the problem. In fact, says Masad, within two days, they rolled out an automatic safety system that separates a user’s “practice” database from their “real” one. The way Masad describes it, it’s a little like having two versions of a website’s filing cabinet — the AI agent can experiment freely in a development database, but the production database, which is the real thing that users interact with, is completely walled off.

I gotta wonder who the median techcrunch reader is if the writer/editor felt it necessary to explain the point of having a staging and prod environment, and with such a pointless analogy. We surely cannot understand what a database is unless we're told it's like a filing cabinet, right?

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jychang ◴[10 Oct 25 08:04 UTC] No.45536400[source]▶
You don't write for your median reader, you write for the vast majority of your readers.

That's a basic concept of writing. Journalism should be accessible, so even if you know what a database is and how to deploy it in different envs, you shouldn't write assuming that. If a large portion of your readers don't know what you're saying, you've failed as a writer. If your readership includes high school students, you write with that as the baseline.

Richard Feynman certainly didn't write as if he assumed the reader knew particle physics. Be like Richard Feynman.

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1. mejutoco ◴[10 Oct 25 08:45 UTC] No.45536612[source]▶
If the median has half the users over it and half under it, wouldn’t writing for most of your readers be very close to writing for the median? If we are aiming for 51% (most readers). Most readers is somewhere between 50% and under 100%.

I appreciate the idea, but I think there are always assumptions. Like you did not explain what the median is because this is hn. I like the standars of the economist, always saying what an acronym is on first usage, and what a company is (Google, a search company). What they dont do is say: Google, like a box where you enter what you want to find and points you to other boxes. That would be condescending for its readers I believe. It is a matter of taste, and not objective, I guess.

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2. IanCal ◴[10 Oct 25 09:28 UTC] No.45536873[source]▶
That would be writing for most users but barely. I think there’s a fair reason they said “vast majority” instead.
3. nkrisc ◴[10 Oct 25 10:17 UTC] No.45537170[source]▶
I don’t think “vast majority” has a rigid definition, but I’d put it closer to 95% than 51%.

For example, in the senate passing with 51 votes is a “simple majority”.

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4. mejutoco ◴[10 Oct 25 10:23 UTC] No.45537213[source]▶
I am not sure the post said "vast majority" originally, to be fair. Is there a way to check?
5. rkomorn ◴[10 Oct 25 10:25 UTC] No.45537228[source]▶
This is all highly personal, so just banter'ing, but:

I agree there's no clear definition but 95% is even beyond "overwhelming majority" to me (with overwhelming being greater than vast). I'd call that "near totality".

Maybe, at least for US contexts, "vast" should line up with "filibuster-proof"? Eg 60-65%? 75% at most.

Of course, then that doesn't tell me anything about what it should mean in other contexts.

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6. Normal_gaussian ◴[10 Oct 25 11:02 UTC] No.45537445{3}[source]▶
I think you're unaware of how vast vast is!

Personally, I feel vast is used to refer to things that 'appear limitless' e.g. vast desert, or when describing easily bound things - like percentages - to be almost complete.

Looking around it seems there is some debate on this, but it tends to end up suggesting the higher numbers:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vast_majority - puts vast as 75-99%

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39222264 - puts vast as greater than 75% (I can't tell if the top comment is a joke or there really is some form of ANSI guidance on this).

But to find a more compelling source I've taken a look at the UK's Office for National Statistic's use of the term. While they don't seem to have guidance in their service manual (https://service-manual.ons.gov.uk/) a quick term limited search of actual ONS publications show:

* https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

- "The vast majority (99.1%) of married couples were of the opposite sex"

- "In this bulletin, we cover families living in households, which covers the vast majority of families. " - this is high 90's by a quick google elsewhere.

* https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/...

- "The vast majority of households across England and Wales reported that they had central heating in 2021 (98.5%, 24.4 million)."

* https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

- "The vast majority (93.0%) lived in care homes."

This seems to put vast in the 90%+ category. There is certainly more analysis that can be done here though, as I have only sampled and haven't looked at the vast majority of publications.

(this was fun, I don't mean to come over as pedantic)

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7. rkomorn ◴[10 Oct 25 12:13 UTC] No.45538064{4}[source]▶
I think your username checks out. :D

Apparently I underestimated vastness.

8. egl2020 ◴[10 Oct 25 12:18 UTC] No.45538110[source]▶
Write for your median reader, and the bottom half will stop reading you. Problem solved.