Web-based coding tools are a popular alternative to desktop applications widely employed in education. Understanding the factors that affect the acceptance of web-based coding tools is a prerequisite for their successful application. With an aim to determine to what extent students' attitude towards programming and their previous programming knowledge affect students’ acceptance of the web-based programming tool, an empirical study was carried out in which the technology acceptance model (TAM) was employed as a theoretical backbone. Participants in the study were students enrolled to the introductory programming course who used Repl.it as a representative sample of the web- based coding tool. The psychometric features of the introduced research framework were examined by means of the partial least square structural equation modelling technique. The study findings revealed that attitude towards programming does not play an important role in the adoption of a web-based coding tool.