fearofpoets's comments

Everyone is talking about self-custody, but there’s a lot more nuance to the discussion that needs to be had. Also, not everyone knows how to self-custody well.

Thanks for verifying. Just got off the phone with the Play Store support folks. Apparently it's the Play Store policy on play.google.com to list every permission you've ever asked for forever. We pushed a build many moons ago while we were in beta that asked for permissions by accident, but fixed it very quickly. We no longer ask for those permissions.

This isn't a great experience for us or other developers, so I'm escalating internally. Thanks again for the report.

Not trying to side-step, just trying not to get into the weeds too much, but since you asked, reposting a bit of my response from another part of this thread:

We need a user account to store your progress: what puzzles you've completed, what code you've entered in order to save progress if you didn't complete the puzzle yet, coding streaks, etc. We're not collecting information about your device (or any other personally identifiable information other than the Google Account we associate with your account).

It's been easiest for us to do this user account creation using out-of-the-box Google Authentication, so that's why we went down this route. Hope that makes sense!

We need a user account to store your progress: what puzzles you've completed, what code you've entered in order to save progress if you didn't complete the puzzle yet, coding streaks, etc. We're not collecting information about your device.

It's been easiest for us to do this user account creation using out-of-the-box Google Authentication, so that's why we went down this route. Hope that makes sense!

If you try to install the app, does it actually list those permissions? Or are they just listed on the Play Store listing?

We think there's a bug that's hitting some folks on Play Store that's related to an old manifest from our Beta 9 months ago... but we don't require those permissions anymore. Or at least we shouldn't. If you do see something when you actually try to download it, could you reach out to [email protected]? We're trying to find instances of this occurring and trying to convince the Play Store team it needs to be fixed :-/

We've thought about putting the signup after the tutorial, just haven't had the time to get to it just yet. I'll add this as a +1 to us starting to work on it :)

Thanks for the feedback!

What login system would you prefer? We're currently doing Google Authentication because it's the best way for us to uphold Google privacy best practices, but can chat with folks about what other types of authentication might be possible.

Weird. I'm usually a consumer and not a poster to Hacker News. Any idea why? Or what I could do to fix?

Good question! We're building Grasshopper while we're within Google's Area 120, so the easiest way for us to ensure Google's privacy best practices are followed is if we use Google Authentication.

It might be possible for us to convince the powers-that-be to use another form of authentication, but for right now, we're sticking with just Google Auth.

Great thoughts! I completely agree that learning to code is a lot about trial and error. One of key things that we decided to do with Grasshopper is make it possible for people to write real code, but on their phones. From the very beginning, it's possible for users to "go off the rails" and write code, run it, and see what happens. We didn't want to do fill-in-the-blank stuff, since there's only one right answer. We constrain the code editing environment to be relevant to the puzzle at hand, but that's mostly so we don't overwhelm beginners.

We also have a Playground (available in the left-hand menu) where users can just play around using the Grasshopper coding environment.

Would love to keep getting your feedback on how we can make everything more real and keep that magic. :)

We're super excited to be announcing Grasshopper today! We're hoping that it'll make learning to code accessible to more adults that are interested in applying coding skills to their careers, hobbies, or just for fun.

Please let us know what you think, ask questions, all that jazz. We're still in the process of learning and making changes, so all feedback is super helpful.

- Laura (Grasshopper Founder)