{"slug": "codepen", "name": "CodePen", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 11, "warners": 2, "score": 2.431, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2025-12-11", "latest": "2026-09-26", "why": "There are a few websites that I can of off the top of my head that don't need an account", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 6, "compare": 1, "warn": 2}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "There are a few websites that I can of off the top of my head that don't need an account", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "codepen.io", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://codepen.io", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["CodePen"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 797654464, "item_id": 49853404, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49853404", "by": "landdate", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There are a few websites that I can of off the top of my head that don't need an account", "excerpt": "> account management is almost worse than something to install True. Even as an adult it's tiring having to keep all my accounts sorted, and that's with a password manager. There are a few websites that I can of off the top of my head that don't need an account or you can choose to log in through google/github: https://codepen.io, https://editor.p5js.org if that's of any use. On a side note, in school I loved repl.it", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us"}, {"id": 785846384, "item_id": 49115399, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49115399", "by": "rglover", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Been a CodePen user/fan since it launched", "excerpt": "This is awesome. Been a CodePen user/fan since it launched (and a fan of Chris/CSS-Tricks for even longer). Really nice to see CodePen evolving. I don't use it as much as I used to but every so often I hack something up in it for a quick PoC. I'll say the new ability to deploy got my attention. Really handy to be able to deploy a prototype or demo of something and toss it over the fence.", "context": "", "use_case": "quick proofs of concept and prototypes", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}, {"id": 782650096, "item_id": 48915631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48915631", "by": "serious_angel", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "have you considered publishing the work at platforms as CodePen", "excerpt": "Thank you, heartfelt... for sharing an artwork, a miracle! Just in case, have you considered publishing the work at platforms as CodePen, where genius Artists/People express their art, too, as you?: // https://codepen.io/about", "context": "", "use_case": "publishing web art demos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ambient Website Background Clouds"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 793556576, "item_id": 49597286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49597286", "by": "pdyc", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "because of these useless shenanigans of codepen", "excerpt": "i made my own html playground that is browser only and shares preview via url hash because of these useless shenanigans of codepen, its not as featureful but i mostly use it for sharing single page html files https://easyanalytica.com/tools/html-playground/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apparently CodePen 2.0 sends data to their servers as you type"}, {"id": 785872512, "item_id": 49117032, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49117032", "by": "zeroq", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "warn", "quote": "A textbook definition of \"feature creep\".", "excerpt": "A textbook definition of \"feature creep\". I have absolutely no idea if CodePen is feeling pressure from their shareholders or want to cook before the IPO, but I often wonder why Spotify needs 3,000 [1] developers working full time on a streaming app. 4 weeks ago there was a thread about Spotify making over 4,000 production releases a day (or 10 in 10 minutes in another comment in that thread). WinAmp has been dead fo", "context": "", "use_case": "online code editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["online code editor", "quick proofs of concept and prototypes", "publishing web art demos", "hosting demo code", "online code playground", "hosting a demo"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49113338", "title": "CodePen 2.0", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47323625", "title": "You gotta think outside the hypercube", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49829650", "title": "'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49596976", "title": "Apparently CodePen 2.0 sends data to their servers as you type", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854431", "title": "Ambient Website Background Clouds", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47675906", "title": "Generative Art over the Years", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1, "warn": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 797654464, "item_id": 49853404, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49853404", "by": "landdate", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There are a few websites that I can of off the top of my head that don't need an account", "excerpt": "> account management is almost worse than something to install True. Even as an adult it's tiring having to keep all my accounts sorted, and that's with a password manager. There are a few websites that I can of off the top of my head that don't need an account or you can choose to log in through google/github: https://codepen.io, https://editor.p5js.org if that's of any use. On a side note, in school I loved repl.it", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us"}, {"id": 793556576, "item_id": 49597286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49597286", "by": "pdyc", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "because of these useless shenanigans of codepen", "excerpt": "i made my own html playground that is browser only and shares preview via url hash because of these useless shenanigans of codepen, its not as featureful but i mostly use it for sharing single page html files https://easyanalytica.com/tools/html-playground/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apparently CodePen 2.0 sends data to their servers as you type"}, {"id": 785907986, "item_id": 49119249, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49119249", "by": "LoganDark", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "https://htmledit.squarefree.com hasn't changed in over two decades.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}, {"id": 785872512, "item_id": 49117032, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49117032", "by": "zeroq", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "warn", "quote": "A textbook definition of \"feature creep\".", "excerpt": "A textbook definition of \"feature creep\". I have absolutely no idea if CodePen is feeling pressure from their shareholders or want to cook before the IPO, but I often wonder why Spotify needs 3,000 [1] developers working full time on a streaming app. 4 weeks ago there was a thread about Spotify making over 4,000 production releases a day (or 10 in 10 minutes in another comment in that thread). WinAmp has been dead fo", "context": "", "use_case": "online code editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}, {"id": 785872336, "item_id": 49117021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49117021", "by": "OuterVale", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "they kept the old style available", "excerpt": "This is something they're certainly aware of as they kept the old style available (https://codepen.io/pen) and created a tutorial on how to make 2.0 work like the old version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMxXwupwURQ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}, {"id": 785846384, "item_id": 49115399, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49115399", "by": "rglover", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Been a CodePen user/fan since it launched", "excerpt": "This is awesome. Been a CodePen user/fan since it launched (and a fan of Chris/CSS-Tricks for even longer). Really nice to see CodePen evolving. I don't use it as much as I used to but every so often I hack something up in it for a quick PoC. I'll say the new ability to deploy got my attention. Really handy to be able to deploy a prototype or demo of something and toss it over the fence.", "context": "", "use_case": "quick proofs of concept and prototypes", "switched_from": "", "story": "CodePen 2.0"}, {"id": 782650096, "item_id": 48915631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48915631", "by": "serious_angel", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "have you considered publishing the work at platforms as CodePen", "excerpt": "Thank you, heartfelt... for sharing an artwork, a miracle! Just in case, have you considered publishing the work at platforms as CodePen, where genius Artists/People express their art, too, as you?: // https://codepen.io/about", "context": "", "use_case": "publishing web art demos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ambient Website Background Clouds"}, {"id": 763554577, "item_id": 47722161, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47722161", "by": "rikroots", "date": "2026-04-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I keep CodePens of some of my better efforts[3] around as a set of extra tests", "excerpt": "> I spent a fair amount of time with p5 etc, but the results always felt limited and brittle. I wrote a JS canvas library[1] partly because existing libraries of the time (2013) didn't do what I wanted a canvas library to do. Things like animated gradients and patterns, etc. I'm still working on the library today - so thats 12+ years of my spare time gone! Generative art - such as challenges like Genuary[2] - is a ke", "context": "", "use_case": "Hosting demo code", "switched_from": "", "story": "Generative Art over the Years"}, {"id": 758047552, "item_id": 47377972, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47377972", "by": "telesilla", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "codepen has a tesseract for a logo", "excerpt": "Thanks! I took your code and modified a bit to remind me of what I had saved years ago. Not quite right but closer. https://codepen.io/tessaracting/pen/yyaMawL Careful around complex numbers! BTW poetically enough, codepen has a tesseract for a logo.", "context": "", "use_case": "Online code playground", "switched_from": "", "story": "You gotta think outside the hypercube"}, {"id": 758015216, "item_id": 47375951, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47375951", "by": "rikroots", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've got a rotating tesseract demo up on CodePen", "excerpt": "I've got a rotating tesseract demo up on CodePen[1]. At least, I think its a rotating tesseract - I have no idea if it's an accurate representation because tesseracts lead me into thinking about quaternions and then my brain shuts down. [1] - https://codepen.io/kaliedarik/pen/yLbQpKq", "context": "", "use_case": "Hosting a demo", "switched_from": "", "story": "You gotta think outside the hypercube"}, {"id": 742543440, "item_id": 46408965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46408965", "by": "zepolen", "date": "2025-12-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "All of those can be done with pure html/css, eg. https://codepen.io/mikestreety/pen/yVNNNm", "excerpt": "All of those can be done with pure html/css, eg. https://codepen.io/mikestreety/pen/yVNNNm", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML"}, {"id": 739786096, "item_id": 46236631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46236631", "by": "zamadatix", "date": "2025-12-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "here's a sample I forked following the mouse using <svg> with <script> inside https://codepen.io/zamadatix/pen/emZXZKx", "excerpt": "The magic here is happening via the <script> tags, where you have access to the browser APIs like you would an <canvas> instead of <svg>. E.g. here's a sample I forked following the mouse using <svg> with <script> inside https://codepen.io/zamadatix/pen/emZXZKx?css-preprocessor=scss Libraries like three.js had SVG rendering as an option but it got deprecated as <canvas> with more direct GPU APIs was a lot more effici", "context": "", "use_case": "Sharing code samples", "switched_from": "", "story": "An SVG is all you need"}]}