When a new thing is invented, we're often stuck with the old words to define it. The first car was a "horseless carriage," and the first computer was a "giant brain." In the same inaccurate way, Replit is an "online IDE."[1]
Replit gets its name from "REPL", the Read Eval Print Loop, a basic language tool found in most modern programming languages and environments -- a tool that allows you to interact with a program by reading, evaluating, and printing data.
If you imagine development environments as a continuum from REPL to IDE, you can see how Replit is located closer to the REPL end. A tool for rapidly validating concepts and exploring ideas.
Replit is a ultimately a reaction to the modern software development grind, where many developers spend their time waiting for builds, running tests, fighting with linters, and configuring frameworks. It's an attempt to get back to the basics of programming -- to make coding fun again.
We aim to collapse the entire development lifecycle into a simple interface: write the code, 1-click, and it's live! With Multiplayer, you can even do all this with other people in real-time.
[1]: It's unfortunately how we currently describe Replit on the marketing pages, which was necessary when Replit was unknown. However, this will change soon.