Hi everyone,
A lot of beginners seem to struggle with Replit’s configuration within the .replit hidden file. I personally think this needs to be addressed. Replit attracts a lot of beginner users to programming, and using the Run button is a nice and easy way to test your code. Running locally usually requires you to use the terminal and install every needed package/dependency and the language itself.
The Run button is automatically set to run main.py in Python, regardless of what file you are working on, (not sure about Node and others). This can be confusing to users who make other files or want to rename the default file to something else. I personally find .replit a bit confusing myself, entrypoint and run are very similar, but are different at the same time.
Time to get to the point. A nice UI for easily configuring .replit, or at least some extension is really needed IMO. This UI should have all of the commonly used .replit configurations, and explain each one in a beginner-friendly manner. When using templates like Python3 and Node, it should be explained that the entrypoint has priority over run, and entrypoint will no longer work after the [interpreter] section is deleted.
Those are just some ideas, and I’m willing to work with some others that have experience with making extensions (because I have no idea how to make one myself) to get a good foundation showing what Replit should implement natively.