Web-based IDEs Edge Closer To the Mainstream

snitch writes "Last week Mozilla released Bespin, their web-based framework for code editing, and only a few days later Boris Bokowski and Simon Kaegi implemented an Eclipse-based Bespin server using headless Eclipse plug-ins. With the presentation of the web-based Eclipse workbench at EclipseCon and the release of products like Heroku, a web-based IDE and hosting environment for RoR apps, it seems that web-based IDEs might soon become mainstream."

Comments

Soil cleaner

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I had this great idea for a product. It would clean the soil in your yard. The soil itself would be clean soil after using the product. In other words, even if you rolled around in it and got the soil all over you, you would still be clean.

Strangely, it was a solution to a problem that no one had. It figures that I shouldn't get my product ideas from Bill & Ted

Re:Soil cleaner

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me Mr. Drug Dealer...I'll have what he's having!

Re:Soil cleaner

[jetsci]

Its scary when you consider the implications of this - as you pointed out.
I can imagine the EULA now:

"ALL YOUR CODE-BASES BELONG TO US!111!"

Re:Soil cleaner

[FiloEleven]

Here I thought it was a Snow Crash reference...

Re:Soil cleaner

[ckaminski]

Note to self, never read the last 50 pages of Snow Crash while tripping on acid.

Oi!

Re:Soil cleaner

[autora]

dammit i'm going to have to go back and read this book again to see what you're talking about now...

Re:Soil cleaner

[joss]

> Note to self, never read the last 50 pages of Snow Crash.

Fixed that for you. Loved the [:-50]

Why not?

[Seth Kriticos]

Sure, they will not replace local editing tools for the main development of applications, but for remote access and small stuff it sounds nice.

Re:Why not?

[von_rick]

I'm wondering how they would word their EULA. If they claim ownership of the code that's compiled and developed on their servers, that would be a deal breaker for most developers.

Otherwise its a wonderfully implemented idea.

Re:Why not?

[digitalunity]

For precisely this reason, I would never ever switch to a remote IDE hosted by another company.

A possibly debatable secondary reason is just that I don't want anyone else having access to my code that is potentially going to be released as closed source. Everyone knows IT guys are generally snoopy when they're bored, and sometimes my comments contain profanities directed towards my users.

Re:Why not?

[Vectronic]

This is rather off-topic, but Sumo-Paint still impresses me, it's not quite as good as Photoshop, etc, but it comes very close...

If Bespin, etc can get anywhere near that functionality/power... it will certainly be useful. Especially in classroom situations, where it can be sandboxed in the browser.

However, I am curious about how one would go about compiling, or is it strictly code-editing, online-only apps?

Re:Why not?

[Garridan]

I'm a Sage developer, and our only GUI is a web interface. Run Sage on your local machine, and you serve to localhost. As Sage developers use the GUI, we're getting more attached to it, and we keep adding more IDE-like features. Recently, there have been discussions to make it easier to edit Sage directly from the GUI. With a little care and extra work, it seems as though we'll be able to make the system such that multiple developers can collaboratively edit the source, making messy merges a thing of the past.

I won't claim that Sage will become a great IDE -- that's not our plan: we want to make great math software. But, the way that people write software is changing. Local editing tools are the best right now because they've had the most time to develop, and today's developers have grown with them. In 10 years? I'm not sure that the younger generation of developers is going to stick with a local copy of emacs. More and more tools are migrating to the web; I don't care to predict that the world isn't going to change.

Re:Why not?

[silanea]

It also sounds to me like something that would be *really neat* to include in a source code control product for teams. [...]

The one does not have anything to do with the other. One provides a managed place for you to put your code, the other lets you write code in a comfortable unified environment. Why would you want to integrate those two?

(Assuming just for a moment that web-based IDEs actually make sense for professional software development.)

Re:Why not?

[John Betonschaar]

With a little care and extra work, it seems as though we'll be able to make the system such that multiple developers can collaboratively edit the source, making messy merges a thing of the past.

Right... So you expect less of a mess when you have different developers hacking away at the same files without a revision-control system to integrate what everyone is doing?

Re:Why not?

[Garridan]

Who said there's no revision control? That falls under the heading, "with a little care and extra work" -- tight integration with mercurial is quite easy, since it has a nice python interface.

Re:Why not?

[cheftw]

Mod parent up - that program is amazing

Re:Why not?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The one does not have anything to do with the other. One provides a managed place for you to put your code, the other lets you write code in a comfortable unified environment. Why would you want to integrate those two?
 
When working in a team environment, integrating the two makes for another channel of communication, especially between geographically separated team members (which seems to be an increasing trend in my personal contracts; I've gone from originally working in a company where source code control was done by shouting over the cubicle walls, to a situation where I'm getting up 3 hours earlier than normal to collaborate with coders in European time zones). It also seems to me to greatly simplify the autosave process if the two were integrated, especially in a web environment- thus capturing all branches of the code automatically server-side, for the project manager to integrate the final code for build.
 
Of course, this all would require at least two major advancements to the current codesets in TFA:
 
1. enough speed for professional software development (something that even current client-side IDEs sometimes lack for me, though the problem might be more of a PEBCAK, or more precisely, a PEBBAF (Problem exists between brain and fingers, instead of between Chair and Keyboard).
2. sufficient integration between the data entered in the client-side web interface and the code repository to show changes when two team members are working on the same source code file.

Re:Why not?

[palegray.net]

Seriously, mod parent up! I don't give a rip if it is a little off-topic; that's the coolest web app I've seen in a very long time.

Re:Why not?

[umghhh]

Measures to cut costs as you suggested, this being outsourcing of non-essential business or using third party solutions usually do not work unless they are done with brains and as that pretty much never happens they do not provide real savings. Spreadshit boys have their field day: once when they get bonuses for saving plan and another time when they have to fix what they messed up while doing it. As long as products still work all is well of course.
Do not misunderstand me - I am not against such measures but I find it funny how it usually is done. besides I am cleaning the mess at the end so I do not complain that it is created in the first place of course. OC a day may come when they work out a new saving plan in which they ship the shit directly after it compiles and then bring me with other unfortunates to the big hall where the spreadshit boys give us a sack. Well I would not work for such company anyways so it is not a big deal.

When I think of saving plans, new great ideas and silver bullets, whatever the current hot word is, I always think about 3. paragraph of java's license agreement and why it applies to most of the software that has ever been written.

Re:Why not?

[JoeMerchant]

Focus on the business at hand (e.g. coding) and quit wasting time on infrastructure (version control, defect tracking, build systems, backup & recovery, server sizing, etc...).

In the past 2 years, I have spent 3490 hours on the "business at hand" (e.g. coding, documentation, meetings, etc.), 10 hours on infrastructure (setup and maintenance of trac, svn, backups, VPN) and 500 hours on lunch. It's a small company, I'm a programmer and the nominal back-end sys-admin.

We easily spend more time configuring people's POP & SMTP settings on their e-mail than we do on our trac and svn servers, which are used daily by 75% of the company.

The real infrastructure inefficiency happens when you give somebody the title "infrastructure guy" with no other responsibilities. Based on our experience, you should need one full time guy for roughly every 300 programmers. Problem is that he also configures people's e-mail, printer connectivity, etc. so when that 1/1000 programmer's support call comes, he's clueless.

Re:Why not?

[digitalunity]

This has been my experience as well. At my former company, we had our own somewhat expensive IT and support crew but everything worked really well. Someone decided to save money by switching to Unisys for help desk support.

Direct support costs went down, but whatever they saved on IT staff we lost 100 times over on lost productivity from help desk tickets being 'resolved' before actual issues and it was a aweful. I have since left the company, but up to the day I left management was still happy using Unisys, which is bizarrely illogical given the higher costs and reduced productivity.

C'est la vie I suppose. Still irks me though how much upper managers get paid for such poor ideas.

Re:Why not?

[amoeba1911]

"it's not quite as good as Photoshop"

Photoshop: $500
Sumo-Paint: $0

Value = Quality / Price
Sumo-Paint = infinite value.

Nice flash program.

Re:Why not?

[SanityInAnarchy]

A possibly debatable secondary reason is just that I don't want anyone else having access to my code that is potentially going to be released as closed source.

That is something you're going to have to live with, if your software is going to be a web application, unless you really want to start building your own datacenter.

Re:Why not?

[SanityInAnarchy]

However, I am curious about how one would go about compiling, or is it strictly code-editing, online-only apps?

I think that would be the idea -- for example, Heroku is all about editing Ruby On Rails apps. I'm also not entirely sure I see the point if your compiled program is an executable that you have to download...

Re:Why not?

[shutdown -p now]

It also sounds to me like something that would be *really neat* to include in a source code control product for teams. Kind of like Microsoft's Visual Studio Team edition, but an intranet web version for closed source and a downright internet web version for open source (so everybody can see everybody else's edits).

Yeah, I second that. Team System / TFS actually has a web portal, and it does do stuff you'd normally expect from a web interface to source control - browse files, view history, do diffs and blames... but it would sure be nice if I could then click on "Edit" in a diff window for a quick change, and yet get most of the goodies a proper IDE gives - syntax highlighting, on-the-fly error checking, etc.

Re:Why not?

[Haeleth]

it's not quite as good as Photoshop, etc, but it comes very close...

Um, no. No, it really doesn't. It's very impressive, don't get me wrong; it looks like it might actually do everything the average person needs. But it does not even remotely begin to approach the same level as Photoshop or its serious competition.

And while it's a very impressive toy, I don't quite see the point. Why would I want to use a slow, poorly-integrated tool that's constrained to my browser window, when I could have a lightning-fast native program?

Exactly the same thing goes for web-based IDEs. What's the point, when I could just run normal software on a computer I carry round with me? It's not like I regularly find myself miles away from home, with the only IT available being an internet cafe, and suddenly think "OMG, I need to write some software and it absolutely cannot wait till I get back into the office!"

Re:Why not?

[ShieldW0lf]

That is something you're going to have to live with, if your software is going to be a web application, unless you really want to start building your own datacenter.

I'm confused... how could you be in the business of building web applications and not have a million and one ideas of cool things you could do with your own datacenter? Isn't building that one golden application that pays for your datacenter so you can unleash your other mad-scientist type plans on the world the holy grail, so to speak?

Re:Why not?

[Vectronic]

You'd be simply astounded at how many people do not have laptops! /sarcasm

The 'point' isn't to be used as a full time dedicated anything, it's simply (in the meantime) for those "damnit, wish I had something installed that could do this" moments, however, "in the future" there will be an even greater desire for web-based applications, with the 15 devices people have, all being able to access their one home server, being able to run your favorite app *as you like it* from anywhere, on any machine with internet... Just becuase you don't like it that way, doesn't mean everyone else wont too.

On top of that, it also means (especially for nettops, OLPC, handhelds, etc) that you can still get something done, without installing anything other than the browser.

Thirdly, if you don't have those little eureka moments, or "I gotta code/create/plan this shit out right now" moments, then chances are you aren't very passionate/enthusiastic about what you are doing.

Quaternarily... you can have a group of people, from different points in the world, all working on the same project, with no hassles... don't have to install some special VPN, could bump into someone on the street, and they could instantly flip-open their laptop, and join in... etc, etc.

Re:Why not?

[whoop]

Don't bother with these kinds, they're all over this place. Every invention they don't already use is pointless. Why would they ever want to do X when they can already do Y with a little workaround? Then they come back with, well, even if I had to do Z, I'd rather go home and do Y + 5 other workarounds, then resort to using this invention. If the people working on this invention just quit and found a cure for cancer instead of wasting their time, the world would be a better place.

Re:Why not?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Isn't building that one golden application that pays for your datacenter so you can unleash your other mad-scientist type plans on the world the holy grail, so to speak?

Except that while building that application, you really don't want to be hosting it out of your garage.

So yes, it would start on my own hardware -- as in, my laptop. Then, if I wanted it to be remotely serious, I'd put it up on Slicehost and let them take backups. If I started getting some serious traffic, I'd branch out to Amazon EC2 and S3.

Then, once I've actually built the next eBay or whatever, it might be worth considering building my own datacenter. But it's just not cost-effective for a small app -- I don't even need an entire machine, and I certainly don't want to be buying several machines (and several network connections, for redundancy), UPS, cooling, etc, when I'm still effectively a Mom&Pop operation.

I mean, I get it -- it would be cool to have all that stuff. But it would be a lot of work to maintain, and it'd be a waste of money, considering the alternatives.

Re:Why not?

[silanea]

Maybe I should rephrase my comment: Being able to control the versioning from within the IDE (as Subclipse does for Eclipse and Subversion) of course is great. Still the storage system and the IDE don't have much to do with each other in my eyes. Could you please elaborate a bit on what you mean by

[...] integrating the two makes for another channel of communication [...]

? I am not really clear what kind of integration you are talking about. Could you point out an example?

Re:Why not?

[afabbro]

In 10 years? I'm not sure that the younger generation of developers is going to stick with a local copy of emacs.

No, they'll want an online copy of emacs. And of course, with the 10Gbps fiber we'll all have by then, it'll only take a half hour to load.

Re:Why not?

[Garridan]

Interesting. The source tarball for Sage is about 200MB, and a binary is about 400MB -- a few hundred MB is "massive bloat"? Most closed-source options are 2-4 times as large. Given the rather incredible dependencies of Sage, we'd be hard pressed to get it much smaller without a severe loss of speed / functionality.

And yes, Sage can read email. The Sage language is a superset of Python, hence the email module works as expected.

Re:Why not?

[turbidostato]

" Focus on the business at hand (e.g. coding) and quit wasting time on infrastructure (version control, defect tracking, build systems, backup & recovery, server sizing, etc...)."

I know the trend. Then you end up with programmers with the slightest idea about code managing and promotion, which deals to proper sustainable design; proper defect tracking policies, why they work and how can be applied for better code; what will need the sysadmin for the app and/or what will be the foreseable scale problems...

You start this kind of externalization so your operations can devote more time, money and effort to your "core", that is, programing, and you end up with programers that cannot program a "hello world" copying it from a book.

Re:Why not?

[shmooattack]

Java and Flash are really the only contenders that are likely to be able to be compiled directly from the browser.

This project allows Java compilation from the browser:

http://opencode.media.mit.edu/

To me, this is far more interesting than using the browser as a text editor.

Re:Why not?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Dude, that's what SSH + Vim are for.

Re:Why not?

[jbolden]

I'm very excited about the Sage project. I started using Mathematica in 1989. Sage offers the ability to cut off pieces of mathematica analysis software and combine them into other apps. Especially with the web driven interface which makes for an easy API. So I think you are making the right choice. It will be hard for you to beat Maple / Mathematica on the desktop but a free web based system offers the potential to swamp them. The same way a decade ago MathCad probably had 10x the number of users of Mathematica and Maple combined, before they kept raising the price.

If I may make a suggestion, in terms of IDE I'd say get integrated with a web based word processor and offer something like Scientific Workplace.

Re:Why not?

[jbolden]

People used Emacs on a at 1200 baud pretty effectively. Just run the app server side and serve the interface over the web.

Re:Why not?

[Jonboy X]

I'm not sure that the younger generation of developers is going to stick with a local copy of emacs.

I'm pretty sure the younger generation won't know how to spell emacs.

Re:Why not?

[Garridan]

Interesting. William Stein (founder of Sage & SABDFL) is a number theorist, so uses latex for all of his word processing -- and this is true for many other Sage developers. It's easy to use latex from Sage, and apparently, William uses Sage from latex in some cases. Most of us are too comfortable on the commandline to really push a project like "make a revolutionary web-IDE", so I'm really glad to see projects like the FA.

It will definitely be interesting to see if "mashups" will ever bring us an incredibly intuitive Word Processor + Computer Algebra System + Typesetting Engine + IDE over the web. With Bespin, Google Documents, Sage and Latex, I can see the possibility, with about 5 years of hard work on all systems but Latex. But then, if I add "Automated Theorem Prover" and "Coffee Disposal Unit" to the mashup, I'll be out of a job.

Re:Why not?

[palegray.net]

It's the concept, idiot.

Re:Why not?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Sure. Coder A, in Amersterdam, logs on to the team website and starts work on foo.bar in the web editor. Coder B, in Japan, logs on to the team website and starts work on foo.bar in the web editor. Since both are actually working remotely on the same server, sure would be nice if both could see the other person's changes in realtime.
 
A slightly different model, of course, has Coder A do his changes to foo.bar and save, Coder B do his changes to foo.bar and save, and Project Manager C gets an e-mail alert with a URL to jump into a pair of DIFF editor windows to reconcile the changes for final checkin.
 
Those were just the first two off the top of my head- there are three or four project management techniques that integrating the editor and the storage system could enable for geographically dispersed team editing.
 
However, as I said above, I'd like to see a couple of improvements in the speed and integration of the WHOLE idea first.

Re:Why not?

[PinkPanther]

Sorry, should have been clearer in my examples. I specifically talked about outsourcing the INFRASTRUCTURE of the SDLC, not outsourcing the SDLC itself. The SDLC PROCESS *is* the business of at hand. Having a shop of developers maintaining backups, creating build systems/bug tracking, upgrading servers and version control systems, etc... is simply taking away from the process of creating software. Having other people worrying about keeping these turnkey systems running allows the developers to focus on servicing the customer base, not servicing themselves.

Re:Why not?

[PinkPanther]

In the past 2 years, I have spent 3490 hours on the "business at hand" [...], 10 hours on infrastructure (setup and maintenance of trac, svn, backups, VPN)

This is very much not inline with my experiences. In most organizations I've been with, the "build master" is a FTE. The "server guy" is a FTE who maintains dev and QA machines (though may also maintain a few other corporate servers). The docs team spends a whack of time maintaining the documentation system. The bug tracking system is a load of garbage because no one is willing to spend time on maintaining it...so emails and/or spreadsheets and/or poorly implemented OSS tracking systems are used thus wasting time and resources because it cannot support a proper SDLC.

All of this is wasted resources. For the majority of companies, these should be commodity systems and thus could be outsourced to someone else to maintain.

Choice of outsourcing should be based on reducing resource cost on the development team, not on reducing the price. Development resources are worth WAY MORE than their hourly wages.

Re:Why not?

[turbidostato]

"Sorry, should have been clearer in my examples."

I know what you mean and, for most part, I'll stay on my position.

"Having a shop of developers maintaining backups, creating build systems/bug tracking, upgrading servers and version control systems, etc... is simply taking away from the process of creating software."

Not having them (==outsourcing the service) makes developers think that servers maintain and scalate themselves by means of magic and they tend to project such vision on their own software for "funny" results: been there, seen that. I wouldn't say going as far as *creating* build systems/bug trackers, etc. but having a hand on their deployment and maintenance it's surely the cheapest way to maintain them afoot on earth. Surely it is not the same a short software mill (on the dozens) that a big multinational software factory nor should it be organized the same but, always to a rationale extent making developers "eat their own dog food" and learn from the mistakes of others makes a wonderful effect. Sure, you won't be able to show the benefits on a spreadsheet as you can show the short-time gained productivity if you outsource but experience shows (it show me, at least) it worths it.

Re:Why not?

[JoeMerchant]

There's a reason why small businesses are more efficient... people doing that crap around here are 100% visible and wouldn't last long on the team.

We clean up our own messes, and help each other out when needed. Now, we do answer to a certain government regulatory agency, and we have spent 90% of the last 6 months running around doing 95% pointless crap for them, so it's not all roses here, but we haven't resorted to pointing at the IT infrastructure as the reason we're not as productive as we'd like to be.

I suspect in your culture, if IT were outsourced to Google, people would find other ways to waste company time and money.

Re:Why not?

[silanea]

Sure. Coder A, in Amersterdam, logs on to the team website and starts work on foo.bar in the web editor. Coder B, in Japan, logs on to the team website and starts work on foo.bar in the web editor. Since both are actually working remotely on the same server, sure would be nice if both could see the other person's changes in realtime.

Ah, ok. Sounds interesting. Though I certainly would not agree to share "my" editor with another coder concurrently. Such an approach would require rather stringent social rules and the goodwill of the participants to prevent real-time edit wars within one file if both editors want to change the same part of the code. Though it would be an interesting option for education/training/supervision.

A slightly different model, of course, has Coder A do his changes to foo.bar and save, Coder B do his changes to foo.bar and save, and Project Manager C gets an e-mail alert with a URL to jump into a pair of DIFF editor windows to reconcile the changes for final checkin.

Ok. But IDEs and source management platforms already support this today, so the benefit would lie in having the IDE on a centralised platform, accessible from virtually anywhere, so you could be sure that everyone uses the same environment.

Not to disqualify your ideas. I am very interested in how this whole move to web-based applications will turn out. I personally just don't see much incentive for switching from local apps to remote ones. Time will tell how useful that brave new world will actually be.

Re:Why not?

[ShieldW0lf]

Then, once I've actually built the next eBay or whatever, it might be worth considering building my own datacenter. But it's just not cost-effective for a small app -- I don't even need an entire machine, and I certainly don't want to be buying several machines (and several network connections, for redundancy), UPS, cooling, etc, when I'm still effectively a Mom&Pop operation.

I mean, I get it -- it would be cool to have all that stuff. But it would be a lot of work to maintain, and it'd be a waste of money, considering the alternatives.

If you say so... not hard to put together a pair of load balancers, a few servers running apache2 and memcache and a few database servers with replication for under 5 grand if you don't mind using refurbished computers to get started... that's an awful lot of grunt and enough redundancy to more than make up for the cheap consumer grade hardware.

Re:Why not?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Real men do it over SSL-ed telnet, doing the handshake manually.

Re:Why not?

[fava]

Many, many times in history we've seen this initial gut reaction to the idea of "remote data". And many, many organizations are recognizing the business benefit of no longer hosting/maintaining their own infrastructure.

Focus on the business at hand (e.g. coding) and quit wasting time on infrastructure (version control, defect tracking, build systems, backup & recovery, server sizing, etc...).

Many, many people decided to do just that and entrusted their bookmarks to a service called ma.gnolia.com

We all know how well that worked out.

If I don't do backups and the system dies then its my fault. If in entrust my data to someone else and the system dies and loses my data its still my fault. If I am responsible for ensuring that the systems are up and running and secure and reliable and everything else then I want to be running them. Then I will only get blamed for my own mistakes and not mistakes by someone else..

Potential for Netbooks

[eldavojohn]

As someone drooling over the insanely low prices of light weight netbooks with weak Atom processors, I was kind of lamenting that there wasn't something I could host on my beefy Linux desktop back home that acts as a code repository and compilation machine while all my development is done through a netbook.

I'm not too keen on someone else's server being the host for my web based IDE and holding my code but if they could make it so you could attach to any server (including one from your home) I would be all over this.

I know it sounds like I'm just coming full circle and mimicking mainframes from the 80s with the ability to cool and keep a quad core beast at home with a terabyte of storage mirrored across two drives while keeping a nice cool easy to move netbook ... but wouldn't that be awesome and liberating?

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[ianare]

If you use a "heavy-duty" IDE like eclipse or netbeans it may run a bit slow on a netbook.
If you are a vi kinda developer then what's the difference between using a versioning system (having the desktop as a SVN/Git server) ?

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[cabjf]

So long as you were always connected a high speed network, it would work fine. It seems like we're moving back to the mainframe idea, but with a less than dedicated connection between the terminal and mainframe.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

Setup ssh on your beefy box. Install eclipse. run xhost +

Now on your netbook ssh -x
login
eclipse&

It should popup on you netbook but be running on your beefy computer.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[TerranFury]

Apart from "xhost +" (which is a bad security move), I wholeheartedly agree. This is what X was designed for.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[3dr]

Hmm, I don't know. I see where you're coming from, but how is this more liberating that having a slightly more capable laptop that has a local set of dev tools? This is the camp I'm in. All the limitations of being tethered (by wire or wi-fi) are gone. I don't see how being tied down is liberating.

I recently upgraded to a smaller laptop (uni macbook) for its smaller footprint and better graphics, and for me, this is a near-ideal mobile dev machine. A local subversion repository that is periodically mirrored to my home server stores everything. The weak point is battery life at <5hrs.

Battery tech and power management are both improving (and will continue to improve) and I think for mobile hackers the netbooks will lose any advantage.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[godrik]

there is no need to xhost + your machine. It is the point of using ssh Xforwarding.

An other version would be to run your IDE from your netbook but alias make to "ssh make" or using a well configured distcc. The last point would be transfering datas. Two options are available here. Either you rsync them to the server, or you mount the code directory on your local machine using ssh, fuse and sshfs

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[xtracto]

I was kind of lamenting that there wasn't something I could host on my beefy Linux desktop back home that acts as a code repository and compilation machine while all my development is done through a netbook.

Lament no more!

I present you, the remote desktop client. There are even free (as in libre and as in gratis) versions for your favourite ouperating system flavour

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Rycross]

A bit off-topic, but I'm not so sure a netbook is a good development environment even if you could set something like this up. Of all the ones I've seen, the keyboard is way too small to be able to type very quickly. Then again, maybe I just have big gorilla hands.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[doug]

Avoid the "xhost +" stuff. From the netbook try something like

ssh -YtC user@beefy.box.com /path/to/eclipse

and you just might get what you're looking for.

- doug

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Windrip]

I wouldn't worry about it. Those who know enough to use ssh to start a remote X session will establish the connection via PKI, not xhost.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[The Cisco Kid]

cvs on server?
compile via ssh?

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Technically true.

It works great when your netbook and your beefy computer are on the same LAN, but it's horrible when you're remotely accessing over the Internet via VPN.

No Machine's NX server makes X bearable with VPN.

I also had good results from VNC, so it makes me wonder if X is losing its "networking advantage."

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Rural]

Install sshfs. Then you can use a locally-installed editor (both emacs and vi work fine, as do others) to edit those remote files. Works great and needs very little bandwidth and even works with intermittent connections, such as trains rolling through the countryside. The newer Gnome gvfs with fuse export achieves pretty much the same thing and I believe KDE has had something similar for a much longer time.

Alternatively, emacs supports direct sftp access, but that's not as convenient for me.

Compiles go through a remote SSH session.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[i.of.the.storm]

Eh, running eclipse over ssh sounds like pain, but I was going to suggest ssh too. But I would probably suggest using vim or emacs instead of eclipse over ssh, because the bandwidth used from running eclipse might be horrid.

Yeah, just tried it on one of the campus servers. Took 5 minutes to start up, and another minute before the screen was actually painted. UI is unresponsive, menus wouldn't draw for another minute, and basically everything has about a 30 second delay. But it would probably work great over LAN.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[jalefkowit]

This is true of most of the original wave of netbooks (which were designed around 8.9" displays), but the market is moving to slightly larger models with 10" displays, which allow enough space for a decently usable keyboard. (I'm typing this on an Asus EEE PC 1000, one of those 10" models, and its keyboard is completely usable for touch-typing.)

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[jdevivre]

...mimicking mainframes from the 80s with the ability to cool and keep a quad core beast at home with a terabyte of storage mirrored across two drives...

Oh my. The irony!
That's like saying the Grand Canyon mimics a crack in a sidewalk. Legacy dudes are saying "I wish!" in chorus.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[JoeMerchant]

For C++, I like Qt - with it, you can have your Linux server do "distributed builds" for your netbook. You can also host your code in git or svn and manage your project in trac - all very easily installable and maintainable on your Linux box - I have a setup running at home for my hobby stuff just because it was so easy to do again after setting up at work. The QtCreator IDE is showing promise, but not 100% released yet.

As for hardware, I bought an eeeBox (Atom desktop) to replace my wife's 8 year old e-mail and browser machine - it's awesome, quiet, tiny, cheap, and 2x more powerful than the already adequate machine it replaced. Since that machine is left on 24-7, the reduced 20W power draw (down from 65W in the old machine) will pay for the purchase price in a couple of years. I'm trying to resist further temptation at least until the Freescale netbooks drop - I might still buy an Atom N280, but I'd like to see some competitive offerings first.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[YourExperiment]

I always find it odd when people lament how underpowered Atom-based netbooks are. Sure, they're not as beefy as a modern dual core desktop system, but short of video editing and 3D gaming they can still handle pretty much anything you can throw at them.

I use Visual Studio on my Acer Aspire One all the time. Code compiles a bit more slowly than on my desktop, but it's still perfectly usable. I love that machine, it's actually small enough to take places, and powerful enough to run everything I need.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[3dr]

Troll?

Oh come on. Disagreement != trolling.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[gknoy]

As someone drooling over the insanely low prices of light weight netbooks with weak Atom processors, I was kind of lamenting that there wasn't something I could host on my beefy Linux desktop back home that acts as a code repository and compilation machine while all my development is done through a netbook.

I'm in a similar boat, and have been working to get Emacs and Slime playing together. Then, I can have a nice sexy REPL running on my server machine, and use a laptop while coding at the couch. (Emacs will run on the laptop, while the REPL is accessed over the network.)

I currently have a few small problems with the idea:

1) I don't really have anything useful to DO with lisp at the moment. I don't have a blog, as I can't really think of any interesting content I'd want to write for it. I need a "toy" project that's complex enough to be a challenge, but also interesting enough that I'd actually want to do it as more than an exercise. Finding this motivation is the hardest part, it seems. (This isn't a Lisp-specific problem, of course -- it applies equally to any other language I'm interested in.) {Suggestions are welcome. (:}

2) I'm absolutely addicted to large screens and dual monitors. I am not sure how well I will be able to code on a laptop.

3) I am reluctant to turn my gaming rig into a unix box to act as the back end for fun coding projects.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Mechanik]

Shameless plug... I work on an Eclipse project (Remote Development Tools aka RDT) that allows you to have a local Eclipse that targets a C/C++ project that lives on the remote machine. No SMB or NFS mounting required, nor do you have to deal with the slowness of running Eclipse over X. When you do something such as build your project, the build commands are sent to the remote machine via the remote protocol of your choice. This can be via SSH if that's what you want. If you want all the whizz-bang features like intelligent search, content assist, call hierarchy, etc. to work in a secure environment then tunnel the mandatory dstore connection over SSH, or setup SSL (I'd recommend the SSH tunnel route). Here are the release notes for our first release. I'd recommend downloading the latest 2.1.1 nightly build over the 2.1 build to get some key bug fixes.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[lordcorusa]

As others have mentioned, `xhost +` is unnecessary in this scenario and potentially harmful.

Also, X is a bit painful to use over slow and/or high-latency connections. For this, you may want to set up FreeNX. Once setup, it works similarly to X, only optimized for low-speed high-latency connections.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Mechanik]

Ugh... sorry for the lack of formatting. I was in a rush and didn't preview.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Mechanik]

An other version would be to run your IDE from your netbook but alias make to "ssh make" or using a well configured distcc. The last point would be transfering datas. Two options are available here. Either you rsync them to the server, or you mount the code directory on your local machine using ssh, fuse and sshfs

Mounting via NFS or SMB is generally dog slow and not recommended. Using an intelligent IDE like Eclipse that wants to parse and index all your source code, and trying to do that on a mounted drive is going to make things even worse as it crawls through every single file in your source tree.

A better solution is an IDE that leaves the files where they are, and offloads all the heavy lifting to that machine, where disk accesses are fast, or are at least fast compared to sending everything over the wire.

I mentioned this in another post, but due to my screwup of not applying good formatting to that one, I'll repost it here, as it's just as relevant. (mods, please ignore the other one)

Shameless plug... I work on an Eclipse project (Remote Development Tools aka RDT) that allows you to have a local Eclipse that targets a C/C++ project that lives on the remote machine. No SMB or NFS mounting required, nor do you have to deal with the slowness of running Eclipse over X. Nor do you have to run your IDE in a browser. The UI runs natively on your local machine, so all that nice stuff like copy/paste and drag n' drop just works (mostly..).

When you do something such as build your project (e.g. "make all", but it can be whatever you wish), the build commands are sent to the remote machine via the remote protocol of your choice. This can be via SSH if that's what you want. The output of the build is populated back to the local machine over the wire, and errors and warnings in your code are mapped onto those remote files so you can do lovely things such as clicking on the errors and being taken to the right location in that file.

If you want all the whizz-bang features like intelligent search, content assist, call hierarchy, etc. to work in a secure environment then tunnel the mandatory dstore connection over SSH, or setup SSL (I'd recommend the SSH tunnel route).

Here are the release notes for our first release. I'd recommend downloading the latest 2.1.1 nightly build over the 2.1 build to get some key bug fixes.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I run eclipse on an EEEPC 701. Runs like a dream.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[SanityInAnarchy]

1) I don't really have anything useful to DO with lisp at the moment... Suggestions are welcome.

Get on a mailing list and watch for interesting things...

What I'm doing at the moment: Aside from work-related stuff, I'm also playing with Amazon EC2, and trying to write an actor library for Ruby. I love Ruby syntax, but I want Erlang concurrency -- but I hate Erlang syntax.

Another interesting project, if you're just looking for something to do: Reia. Someone is trying to implement a language incorporating ideas from scripting languages, like Ruby and Python, but running on top of the Erlang VM.

Another project I'd like to do, but simply don't have time for: Add recursive views for CouchDB. That is, views of views -- kind of like what I can do with Rails' named scopes on a SQL database.

2) I'm absolutely addicted to large screens and dual monitors. I am not sure how well I will be able to code on a laptop.

My laptop has a 1920x1200 resolution and HDMI out, which I plug into a 1080p 24" Dell monitor (cost $300 or so). That's a pretty nice dual-monitor setup.

If I cared, I suppose I would plug something into the VGA port. That'd be three monitors, or two if I decided to turn off the laptop monitor. But really, most laptops should have at least one video out. Laptop stand + external monitor/keyboard/mouse = dual monitors.

However, I also find that with virtual desktops and that much resolution, I don't actually need dual monitors. They're nice, but sometimes I like the convenience of coding on the couch, or in a coffee shop, or wherever.

Also worth mentioning: My laptop is currently my beefiest machine, so I actually am not in this boat of wanting a netbook connecting to a beefy desktop. Nice things about this are power efficiency and portability of a gaming machine (bring it to LAN parties instead of a desktop).

3) I am reluctant to turn my gaming rig into a unix box to act as the back end for fun coding projects.

Make it dual boot. Only boot Windows for games. What's the problem?

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[jcnnghm]

Is there a way to do that with a Windows client connecting to a headless Linux server? I currently edit my code using Netbeans on a Windows box connecting to the server running Samba, but it's way too slow. And before anyone says it, there are a variety of reasons I can't switch to desktop Linux, as much as I would like to.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Nerdfest]

Likewise here with an Aspire One. I think you'll find that the problem with the netbook is not the processor but the rather limited screen resolution (generally 1024x600). If you don't mind the limited resolution and want more processor power, use a remote desktop application over a secure connection.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[gravisan]

The only problem with X forwarding is, if the xserver dies, i.e. your netbook, then the whole workspace dies, the other option is to use some form of xproxy like nx.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Have Brain Will Rent]

You must develop in a completely different style than I do. I have dual 22" monitors and am thinking of going to 4. I cannot imagine developing anything even moderately complex using a single 10" screen.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[bowlingfreak]

If you're serious about this, just setup VNC or NX Server on your linux box and remote into it from your laptop. You then have all the benefits of remote development (more memory, faster processors, more hard drive) with all the other tools you might need as well, not just an IDE. One issue with this solution (or browser for that matter) is, how do you code while on an airplane or some other location without internet access? Who in their right mind would want their IDE Running in a browser?

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[grainfed]

I've tried it - it's horribly slow. How about VNC or NX - I use NX, love it! Apart from a bit of compression, it's easy to forget I'm NOT on my home system

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[ChunderDownunder]

I think you'd be in the minority with 4 screens... More power to you!

Anyway, to support *one* 22" external display - that's what HDMI ports are for. Okay, so the early generations of netbooks have old and slow Intel IGP. It won't be too long before Intel's 4500MHD or Nvidia Ion show up so that Joe Netbook-user can download and watch high def content from the internet on his HDTV.

IMHO we're only seeing the beginnings of the Atom CPU. There's already a dual core version; with time and die shrinkage we could see 4 or 8 core machines still drawing reasonable power as compared to Core 2 Duo (Perhaps powerful enough to run Eclipse!) Then again it depends on what sort of development you're doing, I guess.

Plus, I think the poster is talking about coding on the road. You can't bring your quad monitor setup down to a cafe while you're sipping a skinny soy chai latte (or whatever the netbook-generation drink these days! I'll still to a caffè macchiato)

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Have Brain Will Rent]

But what was being suggested was a server at home and a netbook for development... if you're hooking the netbook up to a big screen to develop you may as well be on the server with a nice full size keyboard. As for development on the road - yes perfectly possible and I've done it myself on a notebook but I don't see it happening on a 10" screen - it's just too limiting for much development work beyond simple text editing. If someone is really going to be doing development on the road I think they'd be better off getting a traditional notebook with a 13" or bigger screen and reasonably large keyboard etc. Just my two cents...

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Dagger2]

Well, basically, you just follow his instructions, but on Windows.

Install Cygwin for Windows versions of ssh and X.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[turbidostato]

"I wouldn't worry about it. Those who know enough to use ssh to start a remote X session will establish the connection via PKI, not xhost."

Bullshit. Launching a graphic app through ssh is just one "ssh -X" away while PKI... well I can't even start thinking how a public key infrastructure launches remote connections at all.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[Sentry21]

The problem with that is that you end up with a graphical interface being shipped pixel by pixel over the network to your machine, and your keystrokes shipped back to the server.

With Bespin, for example, your editing work happens on the local end, and is sync'ed over the network to the server.

Yes, web apps are even more efficient than X11 for such things. Crazy, huh?

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[ckaminski]

I think the ultimate goal is something like what Palm claims to be doing with the Pre, or what Google is doing with Gears - location transparency. If you want to be working disconnected, you can do so, but when you go online, you can take advantage of greater computing resources.

Why should I run a VM or Eclipse on my local PC, when I could instead be running it on the PC on the HR lady's desk, which is only running Word, Outlook, and IE? All that computing power out there, completely unavailable to me today.

That is where we're going in 10 years. I hope. :-)

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[JThundley]

Programming for any extended time on a netbook sucks, I've done it. While I got used to the small keyboard, the small screen is a giant pain. The entire netbook with the lid open sits below the bottom of my monitor, forcing you to hunch over to the screen to get close. Try borrowing somebody else's netbook first and reading Slashdot for an hour on it before you commit to buying one.

Re:Potential for Netbooks

[sonamchauhan]

He probably meant password-less ssh (ssh-agent authentication). This lets you click on a local icon and have the remote app run on your desktop

note: CodePress url

[Tei]

Semi-related sf proyect:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/codepress

Re:note: CodePress url

[AKAImBatman]

Codepress is just an editor. A potentially important piece of any IDE to be sure, but only a piece. You still need file system integration, project control, build support, deployment options, UI editors, code suggestion dropdowns, and a host of other tools and features that make modern IDEs useful products.

Project files? Now we hide the source files!

[0xdeadbeef]

Isn't using Eclipse without the editor kind of pointless?

Re:Project files? Now we hide the source files!

[laejoh]

Hey, I'm an emacs user, you insensitive clod!

Re:Project files? Now we hide the source files!

[digitalunity]

I'm quite convinced someone sufficiently motivated could replicate the Eclipse IDE in ASCII format and functionality in emacs.

Anyone?

 
 
 
Bueller?

Re:Project files? Now we hide the source files!

[AKAImBatman]

You *had* to ask, didn't you?

http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/

And just to keep the vi vs. emacs rivalry well fueled:

http://gpl.internetconnection.net/vi/

Re:Project files? Now we hide the source files!

[Dragonslicer]

Hey, I'm an emacs user, you insensitive clod!

He was talking about an editor, not an operating system.

Re:Project files? Now we hide the source files!

[shutdown -p now]

I'm quite convinced someone sufficiently motivated could replicate the Eclipse IDE in ASCII format and functionality in emacs.

Anyone?

I don't know about similar projects for Emacs, but there is a plugin for Vim that runs Eclipse windowless as a backend, and exposes the services it provides (code completion, refactoring, on-the-fly error checking etc) in Vim. Of course it's all drawn in text mode; the screenshots mostly speak for themselves.

Is this just muscle-flexing?

[puppetluva]

Don't get me wrong. . . I think it is an amazing technical feat, but is it really practical to require internet access for this?

I think it is time that we as a community get behind a project that allows these remote apps to be cached locally for fully disconnected use (with a desktop runtime -- something akin to Adobe Air). It would be great to visit the site once and thereafter run it local (and get updates later while connected). As long as I'm fantasizing, I think we should try to make this a standard for new desktop apps -- written like gadgets, but full blown apps.

What do you think? Are there projects out there that are working on this already?

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[talcite]

Google Gears does this exactly.

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

http://code.google.com/p/gears/

Pretty much what you asked for. OSS, available for a large number of platforms, and already seeing some real world use.

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[godrik]

What do you think?

I think that I do not need web based applications. They are slow and do not do what I want them to do. It entraps you into a given view of your data without getting fine control on it. Can you search your mail on gmail for one containing an URL that matches a given list from a webcalendar ? No you can not, because you have no raw access on the data.

I only use web based applications as a remote access when I am using a windows machine (Otherwise, I can use ssh and X11 forwarding and everything is fine).

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[Viol8]

>or even on your own server in your basement.

Which would make the whole enterprise totally pointless. Anyway , anyone with a clue about X Windows (ie not MS and Apple fanboys and probably no one who has the words HTML, Javascript or Ruby in pride of place in their resume) knows that people have been able to do this sort of thing for 20 odd years without going near a web browser.

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[scamper_22]

I think this would be great at work. Let's face it, when the network goes down at work, you're already pretty much screwed. It rarely happens.

Right now, on my work computer, I have the following IDEs installed to handle different projects:
Eclipse
VC++ 6
Visual studio 2005
Visual studio 2008
Lotus Applications.

VMs might be a good idea here :P But so would web based versions. All updates, library versions, configurations... are handled by a central web based app reducing IT support... (maybe)... unless the web based version generates more issues. But of course, it would have to be flexible enough to accomodate all the tools we use.

I personally use cygwin even with all the IDEs to do file manipulation stuff (searching, copying...). It never hurts to have a terminal running in your development dir.

But of course, my using cygwin dictates that I am a windows user and such my opinion is invalid.

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[YourExperiment]

I agree - in fact, I'd go even further. If only there was some way to run an "executable file" natively on my machine that could handle these kind of development tasks.

It could perform the same job as these web-based IDEs, but potentially much quicker, and without requiring internet access. I don't know if such a thing would be feasible, perhaps it's a crazy idea, but I can dream.

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Can you search your mail on gmail for one containing an URL that matches a given list from a webcalendar ? No you can not, because you have no raw access on the data.

If that's the only obstacle, yes you can, because you have IMAP access. Which means if needed, you also have a copy of all your data.

But this isn't entirely about web apps that someone else needs to run...

Otherwise, I can use ssh and X11 forwarding and everything is fine

Unless you have a slow connection. Or an app which decides to crash, because the two versions of X11 are too different.

For that, the web is actually a much superior interface. And if you're the one writing the app (or using an open source one) and running it, I see no reason it "traps" you any more than any other GUI. Probably considerably less, if it's using a standard database like MySQL or SQLite, instead of its own format.

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[godrik]

Can you search your mail on gmail for one containing an URL that matches a given list from a webcalendar ? No you can not, because you have no raw access on the data.

If that's the only obstacle, yes you can, because you have IMAP access. Which means if needed, you also have a copy of all your data.

OK, gmail was the wrong web app.

Otherwise, I can use ssh and X11 forwarding and everything is fine

Unless you have a slow connection. Or an app which decides to crash, because the two versions of X11 are too different.

Is this even possible ? It should be a bug, X11 is supposed to be a standard that do not rely on the implementation. But bugs exist anyway and they are not less annoying if they are not suppose to exist.

If you have a slow connection, you usually have a slow bandwith AND high latency which will make the work very annoying. You will prefer to get the data you need locally and push them back when you're done. (by downloading them or using sshfs)

For that, the web is actually a much superior interface.

If you are not on a machine configured to do the job AND configuring is a long process, then I agree that web based application can be useful. (However, most of the time I was not at home, I had an easy way to do get/change the data I needed)

And if you're the one writing the app (or using an open source one) and running it, I see no reason it "traps" you any more than any other GUI. Probably considerably less, if it's using a standard database like MySQL or SQLite, instead of its own format.

Of course, if the web application is opensource and run on a machine you are controlling, then you'll have full access to anything. Your point about using a database is not valid. If it was easier using a database, why did not the classical GUI application use it ? GUI application have the benefit that they can see other windows and potentially interact with them, feed them with data. I am not sure you can do that easily with a classical web based application.

Most of the time I see web based application as : rewritting an existing application in a web fashion, which most of the time is a complete waste of time. But I agree that for some jobs, they can be useful (for instance when I only got a machine that can only communicate through HTTP).

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[SanityInAnarchy]

It should be a bug, X11 is supposed to be a standard that do not rely on the implementation.

Really? I've never even heard it proposed that there's an official, over-the-wire spec.

And yes, I have had apps crash and burn horribly, sometimes simply by using remote X, though it did seem to be more frequent when the X server was a different flavor than the client libraries.

If you have a slow connection, you usually have a slow bandwith AND high latency which will make the work very annoying. You will prefer to get the data you need locally and push them back when you're done. (by downloading them or using sshfs)

Point is, with a well-written browser app, you're already doing this. The app developer can work out how much to balance for client CPU/RAM vs network usage. All without forcing the client to install anything.

Your point about using a database is not valid. If it was easier using a database, why did not the classical GUI application use it ?

Because we were talking about existing apps.

If you want to talk about brand-new apps, sure, might even be better to have it simply use a local sqlite database. But...

GUI application have the benefit that they can see other windows and potentially interact with them, feed them with data.

I'm trying to think if I have ever found that useful.

Nope. And certainly not nearly as useful as feeding other applications data via native APIs, particularly over the Internet.

They are also easier to extend (with Greasemonkey, and with a network API); they come with a number of features users are beginning to expect, out of the box (tabbed interface, back/forward buttons, bookmarks); they are automatically cross-platform in the way Java wishes it was; they are often faster to develop; they're accessible anywhere, and the barrier of entry is way less than trying to teach users about ssh and X forwarding.

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[Sentry21]

Google Gears does this.

The reason NOT to do it with Adobe Air is the same as the reason not to use any cross-platform toolkit - all you end up with is the lowest common denominator experience and functionality.

It should be definitely doable to make Bespin Gears-aware, so that you don't need your internet connection for the duration - just when you're done editing, want to save to the server, etc.

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[godrik]

All this discussion is interesting, we are definitely not doing the same things with our machines.

Re:Is this just muscle-flexing?

[ckaminski]

Um, trying to besmirch Google mail search is in poor taste, IMHO. It's by far the best search engine for email I've ever used, and it's never failed to turn up what I was looking for. So I'm not sure what sort of scenario you're trying to paint, but I do think you're going about it the wrong way.

Re:Web-based Visual Studio for MFC

[AKAImBatman]

I do believe you've been had. His comment about Win32 strikes me as the intended 'tell' for his sarcasm. The point being that developing desktop applications in a web-based IDE doesn't make much sense. Which I do agree with. The two environments are not at all integrated.

Of course, the AC conveniently ignores the massive business of web development which *could* benefit from centralized IDE services.

I doubt it

[El_Muerte_TDS]

It will either be a shit load of network communication (which will be slow).
Or a lot of client side caching and processing (heavy on memory).
IDEs need to be fast and responsive, a slow start is acceptable. You don't want to wait seconds for files to open, or even for code completion (and other nice gimmicks) to kick in.

Re:I doubt it

[QuantumRiff]

If you got a netbook, or lightweight laptop, and need to work on a file for a huge code project, this would be much, much faster. Even if there is a bit of lag in the UI. Your server (or server farm) you connect to is just about guaranteed to have faster processors, more ram, and larger disks.

Have you ever used the google apps? They are actually very quick and responsive, and work in a similar way.

Re:I doubt it

[FunkSoulBrother]

Have you ever used the google apps? They are actually very quick and responsive, and work in a similar way.

Just my anecdotal experience, but I spend most of my day in Google Docs spreadsheets that I think it is fair to call small (8 columns by somwhere between 20 and 100 rows). At any given time, there are zero to 3 people collaborating on the same document as me. It is slow as shit. I just sorted a 25 row column (just a simple A to Z sort), there was almost 5 seconds in between choosing the GUI function and seeing the result. It even lags when typing in a cell sometimes. I couldn't imagine doing development work in such an environment.

Re:I doubt it

[JCSoRocks]

I don't understand the push toward web applications where it's not necessary. Obviously the main advantage of a web app is that it's much easier to roll out in a corporate environment. I've never used a web app that performed better than its desktop equivalent. Not in response time, not in convenience and, with a few exceptions, not in features. In the case of IDEs - does anyone really want this? I've been developing through VPN on a virtual machine and the repaint on that has been bad enough. If I were using a web app I think I'd lose my mind. Also, I'd be waiting for the next browser update to break it and prevent me from doing any development.

Re:I doubt it

[theCoder]

I can't imagine there is a netbook or lightweight laptop out there that is so slow it cannot run Emacs to load source files, which are just plain text. Emacs may have been bloated 20 years ago, but by today's standards it's lean and mean (of course, this means we've developed whole new levels of bloat in things like Eclipse). Any machine that can run Firefox can run emacs.

I guess it's neat that you can edit source files through a browser, and I can even think of times where it would be useful (editing files on a server you have no other access to). But for day to day usage? It seems like it would be pretty bad.

Another thing in the cloud?

[wjh31]

How many more things need be integrated to the cloud before we start to blur the edges into thin clients (in a good way).

Re:Another thing in the cloud?

[cbiltcliffe]

Do you think that's air you're breathing?

Hhmmm.

uhmm......

[omar.sahal]

Integrated Command-Line - tools like vi and Emacs have demonstrated the power of integrating command-lines into editors; Bespin needs one, too

I use vim and really the only reason I do is so I don't have to install and learn another editor. What make emacs and vim so powerfull is not their command line tools, its their ability to be scripted. That way every language that has ever been used has its own mode. One editor for sql, c, python, lisp, html, css, JavaScript etc. Does this do that or not? If so with web based software (all the hype these days) this project could get lots of attention, and if its really useful it may convert enough programmers over to this new platform.

Offline coding???

[Foofoobar]

I often find myself without an internet connection and will just pull up Eclipse on my laptop and work on my checked out copy of the codeline. I don't need the connection except to check code back in and versioning control systems )if setup and used properly) already allow for collaboration (to an extent). So why should I require a connection to code? I want to work on code whenever I want regardless of whether I can find a wifi hotspot or not.

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[wjh31]

there are loads of acronyms with many meanings, and with almost all of them the meaning is left unambiguous by the context. If you cant figure it out from the context, then it's probably not of importance to you.

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[cbiltcliffe]

Idiot Dumbass Editor.

Re:Web-based Visual Studio for MFC

[Vectronic]

I figured as much, but the prospect was too tempting to ignore...

I don't see why "real" applications couldn't be developed though, albeit they would have to be very limited in their imports and what-not, as well as almost mandatory open-source, and could be compiled on the host server, then spit out the executable back through the browser.

Although handling security would be a nightmare I would imagine, plus it would have to have an amazing code-analysis to make sure there was no infinite-loops, security-bypassing, etc in the code. However generally anyone knowledgeable enough to get that far, probably wouldn't need a web-based IDE to bypass the system they are typing it on.

Version 2

[chelsel]

The next release will feature "offline code editing"... just to bring things full circle.

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[Dog-Cow]

AKA, a slashdot editor?

Javascript

[TheNinjaroach]

That would indeed be awesome, but I think the amount of Javascript code required to make the Web IDE behave properly would probably be too much for an Atom processor to handle in a responsive manner.

Perhaps for your situation, a remote X session or RDP would be better.

mainframe solutions, mainframe problems.

[tjstork]

As people romance the scale and stability of the mainframe and move towards centralized, mainframe approaches, they forget the reasons that gave birth to the PC revolution to begin with.

Having your stuff on your computer is an immensely liberating act. No matter what the terms of service, your data is in someone else's charge when its on yonder mainframe, and you are at the mercy of their data center when it comes to performance, user interface, virtually all aspects of the system.

On the other hand, with a PC, particularly as applications move towards more open file designs, you get much more control, more choice, and as much power as you would like to invest in.

Re:mainframe solutions, mainframe problems.

[StormReaver]

> No matter what the terms of service, your data is in someone else's charge when its on yonder mainframe, and you are at the mercy of their data center when it comes to performance, user interface, virtually all aspects of the system.

You have just described the PC experience over the last two decades (before FOSS developers got their acts together). The PC was liberating for less than ten years, then it got closed off into a proprietary wasteland, and is just now regaining the liberation that drove its initial popularity.

Re:mainframe solutions, mainframe problems.

[jbolden]

Maybe. What really drove it was the unresponsiveness of the corporate IT departments to user demand. The "rogue" IS problem. IT departments managed to reassert control via the "managed PC".

What's happening with SAS is that internal IT departments are getting competition from external IT departments. The end users have access to a wealth of applications even on their managed PCs. They have choice and departments that are anxious to provide services just like the late 80's - mid 90s.

Given the current managed environment I see the move internet apps as increasing freedom.

I'm skeptical

[IdahoEv]

I'm going to remain skeptical.

Net apps are great, but their performance in many areas is unavoidably way below that of native apps. When you can do everything with JS, you can be reasonably speedy if the processing requirements aren't huge and your browser doesn't leak memory too badly. (Dammit, Firefox!)

But when you need to persist data, you have to spawn an ajax query and that 1/10 to 1/4 second (even over a fast network connection) just isn't comparable from the user perspective to hitting a local HD. As local mass storage switches from HD to solid-state over the next couple of years, the difference between native and web apps is going to increase, not decrease.

Besides, half of these things are going to be ad-supported, right? At least in my experience, the performance of most websites has decreased the last 3 years or so as they hit and increasing number of different servers. It's typical for a single page to load content, ads, local javascript, stylesheets, and analytics from 10 or more pages. Each of these connections triggers its own DNS query. Every connection and every DNS lookup has a %age chance of hanging for a few seconds due to network traffic, server load, or what have you - as a result almost 10% of web pages I try to load these days stall for a few seconds. Do you really want that kind of crap going on in the background while you're developing? I don't.

Hah! Just reminded of a most annoying example! Slashdot, for me, loads pretty much instantly. But every time I post and click that "preview" button, there's a five-second wait before the preview actually shows up. That'll be fun, and additional five seconds for every classfile save in my IDE...

Re:I'm skeptical

[i.of.the.storm]

Hmmm, that preview lag is really annoying, especially because sometimes it just gets stuck. Yeah, webapps are kind of lame for anything that's not really basic.

Re:I'm skeptical

[Unnngh!]

That lag is not intentional? Back in the day, you had a choice to 'preview' or just 'submit' directly, the first time through. Preview always took much longer than submit, and it used to ding you if you replied too quickly.

Re:I'm skeptical

[drinkypoo]

You could do it with google gears or another offline web framework. Lots of it runs on your machine without any remote queries and you can cache stuff locally. I haven't actually had to try offline google yet since I've been online the whole time though, so I haven't actually used gears exactly :)

Re:I'm skeptical

[SanityInAnarchy]

But when you need to persist data, you have to spawn an ajax query and that 1/10 to 1/4 second (even over a fast network connection) just isn't comparable from the user perspective to hitting a local HD.

Or you use something like Google Gears... But let's pretend we have to do it your way, as there are some advantages anyway.

Notice the 'a' in 'ajax'? It stands for asynchronous -- as in, you don't have to wait, the UI remains responsive.

Besides, half of these things are going to be ad-supported, right?

No reason they have to be. Especially the open source ones -- I think there is some real value in having a beefy machine that you own somewhere, and accessing it with a netbook.

It's typical for a single page to load content, ads, local javascript, stylesheets, and analytics from 10 or more pages. Each of these connections triggers its own DNS query.

In other words, it could be poorly implemented, and it could be slow to load the first time, until that DNS is cached at your local machine, your ISP, their ISP, and so on all the way to the root servers.

Hah! Just reminded of a most annoying example! Slashdot, for me, loads pretty much instantly. But every time I post and click that "preview" button, there's a five-second wait before the preview actually shows up.

Again, a poorly-implemented example. There's no reason the "preview" function couldn't be done in Javascript. There's also no reason the "submit" function has to hide the preview, then scroll you back there when it's finished.

A better implementation might do the preview entirely in Javascript, and keep it the same size when submitting (plus maybe some floating status), so you could scroll down and keep reading while it tries to save.

Oh, and it's not five seconds. It's usually less than one, for me, unless there's something seriously wrong with my network.

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[JustOK]

WTF may refer to:
Wonderful Tingling Feeling
Waterfowl Training Facility
Web Transfer Function
Wide Tunnel Friction
Wispy Transformer Fructose

I can see it...

[Evan Meakyl]

... 2012 will be the year of the in-game web-based IDE...

Re:I can see it...

[shutdown -p now]

Yeah, and that game will be DN4ever. Running on GNU/Hurd with open source NVidia drivers, no doubt.

But... but...

[robbrit]

Vim? Please don't leave me...

Re:But... but...

[spartacus_prime]

Real programmers use emacs.

Re:But... but...

[dkleinsc]

Real programmers use butterflies.

Re:But... but...

[robbrit]

Damn! You beat me to this one.

Re:But... but...

[zztong]

Real programmers use butterflies.

You'll have to pry my Monarch from my cold, dead hands!

No mention of seaside?

[TheRaven64]

Not only is Seaside still unsurpassed as a web-app framework, it's had a browser-based IDE for years. Is this suddenly a new feature for its competitors?

Re:No mention of seaside?

[AKAImBatman]

Is this the SeaSide you're referring to?

http://www.seaside.st/

If so, that was a rather unpleasant experience. The entire page refreshes on every interaction with the controls. That sort of technology has been around for nearly a decade now and has never caught on for a lot of good reasons. Not the least of which is that the back/forward buttons royally mess with the expected state of the widgets.

For an example, try playing around with this tab editor for Ocarinas. It looks good on the surface, but after using it for any significant period of time, you'll easily bump into significant flaws in the way it works. Even bumping the wrong key by accident can cause an extra tab to get inserted or work to be lost. Compare this to the more primitive Tab Maker which provides a very smooth experience via DHTML technologies.

Re:No mention of seaside?

[Grapedrink]

I think the parent is absolutely correct, seaside has been doing this for years with halos, code browsers, inspectors, search browsers, etc. You can also easily build your own because of how Smalltalk works (the dev UI uses Smalltalk and it is fully meta-driven by the language itself).

Maybe I am missing something, but I am not sure what you are talking about regarding seaside refreshing. If you had bothered to download, install, use seaside, or even read the documentation, you would know that seaside almost never does a full page refresh.

The whole point of the seaside framework is that it is stateful like a desktop application. There is no need to refresh the page. If you look carefully or take a peek at the code, it refreshes just the UI component you are working with, for example a code browser or halo.

You can change the actual URL via your components to create the illusion of switching pages, or even do a redirect, but the design used is to swap components in the UI as needed, not refresh the page. The page can maintain your state or even persist most parts of it long after your gone, so vs. almost every other popular web framework, there is next to no risk of losing your work unless you coded it as such. I don't think you understand seaside and how it uses sessions in conjunction with state management, script, and the web context.

FYI, seaside does use a lot of these "DHTML technologies." It also uses a ton of AJAX if you want, and does indeed support the back button (old seaside versions used backtracing for instance) quite well (better than almost any other AJAX framework, plus you can customize this behavior easily).

The one thing you are even close to being correct about is this technology has been around for nearly a decade. Actually, longer. Seaside is a continuations based web framework, and others have been around to some degree for awhile. Seaside took its inspiration from web objects for example.

Re:No mention of seaside?

[AKAImBatman]

Maybe I am missing something, but I am not sure what you are talking about regarding seaside refreshing. If you had bothered to download, install, use seaside, or even read the documentation, you would know that seaside almost never does a full page refresh.

One of us is, anyway. Maybe it's me, but I don't see any signs of the technologies you're espousing. Perhaps there's AJAX and DHTML in the full kit, but their examples don't show it.

Go view the examples here:

http://www.seaside.st/about/examples

Every time you click on a control, there's a full page refresh to communicate the state back to the server. That's not AJAX. That's ancient state-tracking technology. Early versions of Wings used to do the same thing before they started using AJAX.

Of course, having the server hold on to even the most minute of state changes has some serious issues. One is performance. Local DHTML widgets are always going to be more responsive than page refreshes or even AJAX calls to maintain state. The second is that if the state gets out of sync for any reason (like the aforementioned back/forward buttons) the widgets can begin behaving unexpectedly. In particular, options that the user may THINK were changed will have different states once the page refreshes. AJAX is even worse because an inconsistent state can persist on the client throughout the usage of the widget. This can cause the entire program to submit incorrect information and frustrate the user.

A better approach is to have the client widget act on behalf of the server, then submit back information as required. Information should only be sent back in complete batches, thus ensuring that there's never a consistency problem between the client and server. As a bonus, the client can be more responsive and interactive than with the server-state model.

Re:No mention of seaside?

[TheRaven64]

Seaside has been around for a lot longer than AJAX. It was originally designed without AJAX in mind, and by default does not use it so that it works correctly with any browser, even without JavaScript enabled. By most users, this is seen as a feature, not a bug.

If you want to use AJAX take a look at the script.aculo.us integration section. This contains a lot of examples, such as drag and drop where the server-side model is automatically updated.

Mostly, the AJAX versions use almost the same code as the non-AJAX versions with Seaside. The basic drawing model that it's had since the beginning matches very well with partial updates.

What a stupid idea!

[Akir]

Why do I think this? Because most online office application have a EULA, which states, more or less, that anything you write with it belongs to them. Who's saying that this doesn't apply to online IDE services? Software copyright is already insanely convoluted (or maybe just insane?) as it is. I can't even imagine a programmer who would use an application online where his source code is made available on a public-facing server (which is a big deal for those writing propriatary software) when a superior program is available natively for for their platform where they can keep their rights.

However, if the idea is that a company or individual sets up bespin for their private usage, then it would make sense.

Re:What a stupid idea!

[Weedlekin]

"I can't even imagine a programmer who would use an application online where his source code is made available on a public-facing server (which is a big deal for those writing propriatary software) when a superior program is available natively for for their platform where they can keep their rights."

Especially when so many programming editors and IDEs are FOSS and / or free as in beer, and do not therefore have any onerous DRM schemes, registration requirements, or installation limits.

Note though that having said the above, I think that systems like Bespin (or rather, what it could eventually evolve into) would be extremely useful for certain types of work _if_ they could be run from any web server, especially if both installation and integration with an existing project structure, version control system, etc. was quick and easy. Its appeal would be much more limited without that option, because not only companies, but also individuals (including a lot of FOSS developers) would be wary of putting their source on the servers of any organisation whose EULA includes a "reserves the right to change the terms of service at any time without prior notice" clause.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Notepad

[Frankie70]

I have stopped using my local Notepad. I use a web based Notepad these days.
It totally rocks.
Planning to try a web based browser next so that I can uninstall Firefox from my machine.

Re:Notepad

[badkarmadayaccount]

Actually, a JS rendering engine might possibly come up with a *gasp* non-crappy DOM implementation. Though some Perl bindings might be needed. pQuery, anyone?

Re:mainframe solutions, mainframe advantages.

[nurb432]

There are also advantages, its not all doom and gloom. As a user you get more power, reliability, centralized support, automated backup, universal access. As a company, you get more billing options ( who here remembers cpu and tape mount charges? ), control over your data, better security and application management ( licensing ).

Now, that said, having lived thru both ways, I think there is room for both datacenter and personal computing models.

Cloud Based Progamming?

[tarlss]

Is this how we're going to avoid any Eclipse based entanglements? Sounds like a lot of Tibanna Gas.

Re:Cloud Based Progamming?

[butalearner]

Is this how we're going to avoid any Eclipse based entanglements? Sounds like a lot of Tibanna Gas.

All of these comments and this is the first Star Wars joke. I find our lack of faith disturbing.

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[AKAImBatman]

Um, have you heard of google? I hear they let you store stuff on hard drives...over the web!

Worst. Argument. Ever.

BTW, for those of you who think I'm just trolling, here's an excerpt from the book "When Computers Went to Sea":

Because of shipboard space constraints, the NTDS computers called for very compact high-capacity memories that would also have to be unusually reliable. Electrostatic and mercury delay line memories were physically large, fragile, and out of the question for shipboard use. Magnetic drum memories were not only large, slow, and of limited capacity but were also incompatible with a ship's rolling and pitching in a seaway. Such motions would put large, unwanted gyroscopic precessional forces on the bearings of the massive spinning drums.

Supposedly if the drums were not properly balanced, the gyroscopic forces were powerful enough to induce significant roll into the ship's standing on the water.

The MCP (or "Master Control Program") was the main operating system of the Burroughs (later Unisys) range of mainframes. CANDE stood for "Command AND Edit program" which was an IDE similar in principle to the BASIC editors that many folks may remember using in the 80's. The primary difference is that the T27 terminals worked in a stateless submit/response mode similar to how HTTP works today. Since a persistent connection was not maintained like with the IBM terminals, code was usually edited one screen at a time before being transmitted back to the mainframe.

I shouldn't even have to explain the switch flipping. That was the ideal method of programming the old Honeywells. ;-)

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[cbiltcliffe]

Hex editor, you n00b!!

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[mcgrew]

Does "Web-based Integrated Drive Electronics" make sense?

No, which is why I investigated further. Had they spelled it out I would have known that it held no interest to me.

I'm a coffee addict and it's early; my old brain needs to warm up before it functions properly.

We also threw glowing discs at the MCP right up until management put a stop to our shenanigans

Coincidentally I just watched TRON two days ago. It's still a good movie, and somehow even after almost thirty years it's still not outdated.

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[AKAImBatman]

I'm a coffee addict and it's early; my old brain needs to warm up before it functions properly.

Ah. See, that's a different problem from the issue of spelling out acronyms. 99% of people "got it" as soon as it was posted. So you'll just have to warm up the vacuum tubes and pour some coffee into the primer channels before tackling Slashdot in the morning.

Besides, everyone knows that IDE (aka ATA or ATAPI) has been replaced by SATA. The IDE term is antiquated and only exists as one of those strange connectors on some "legacy" motherboards. Sort of like those odd "ISA" slots occasionally found sitting next to the PCI and PCIe slots. ;-)

Coincidentally I just watched TRON two days ago. It's still a good movie, and somehow even after almost thirty years it's still not outdated.

Has it really been that long? God, now I'm really feeling old.

Mod parent up

[Viol8]

If I had mod points I'd mod you up. The web weenies really have no clue about the kind of functionality that power users want. As long as the eye candy looks "kewl" and the app is "Remote editing! , woah!, cutting edge dude!" (they've probably never heard of X Windows) thats all they need.

Aren't you recreating the dumb terminal?

[TravisO]

I know some green screens from 30yrs ago that pretty much accomplish what you are proposing, and there's a reason we moved away from those.

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[mcgrew]

My point exactly.

Why not just LogMeIn to your PC at Home?

[cyclocommuter]

Install LogMeIn on your beefy Home Workstation and logon to it from the browser running remotely on a netbook, laptop, or desktop.

Re:Web-based Visual Studio for MFC

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Why is that tempting? It seems like the equivalent of paying second graders to do your taxes.

An expert in the field, finally!

[aaron_ds]

I coded up a web-based IDE two years ago for my senior project at California State University Fresno and presented it to a group of entrepreneurs at the Central Valley Business Incubator. It was a student project, but it incorporated SVN on the backend and did some slick syntax highlighting in real time on the frontend. A user could login anywhere, code for a bit, commit changes and logoff.

They smiled and nodded, but it was evident that they had no idea what an IDE was let alone how a web-based IDE would enhance the development process.

It has been technically possible for years, but now with Mozilla's Tamarin, and Google's V8, more complex functionality can be added (webtellisense?).

Partial Bullshit

[jonaskoelker]

Let's see
As a user you get:

• more power - no, the server controls your data and you have to be the kind of person who knows what a web scraper is and how to write one to get it out without spending $BIGNUM hours.
• reliability - depends on whether you're better at managing your local app than the bottleneck of you managing to always have a connection and them managing the app.
• centralized support - whether that's good depends on how good support you can get. Your mom is going to prefer good support from you rather than mediocre support from "Robert" who works in Calcutta.
• automated backup - if you delete a mail from your yahoo mail account, can you get it back? It's only really a guard against hardware failure, which I haven't seen on my computers except a single DVD burner (big deal, I lost only money and no data)
• universal access - true.

As a company, you get:

• more billing options - great, except consumers hate having to optimize depending on their changing usage scenarios.
• control over your data - unless you consider your customers' data yours, I don't see how.
• better security - you are running more potentially vulnerable applications than otherwise. How's that better security?
• licensing - Blizzard seemed to fail (there are (or were) no-pay servers working well with the no-pay trial client), despite slashdot saying companies should go that route.

I'm not saying I hold the objective truth, just some counterpoints which seem to justify a deeper investigation.

Re:Partial Bullshit

[SanityInAnarchy]

more power - no, the server controls your data and you have to be the kind of person who knows what a web scraper is and how to write one to get it out without spending $BIGNUM hours.

I think this is probably talking about things like the universal access. After all, the amount of additional power you'd have out of having the data locally is again relative to if you're the kind of person who knows how to write data mining software.

reliability - depends on whether you're better at managing your local app than the bottleneck of you managing to always have a connection and them managing the app.

Almost no one is good at managing a local app. Ask ten people if they do backups -- I bet nine of them will say "no".

And you don't really have to. Your connection dies, you pick up a laptop and go to a coffee shop. Problem solved -- or at least, now it's your ISP's problem.

centralized support - whether that's good depends on how good support you can get. Your mom is going to prefer good support from you rather than mediocre support from "Robert" who works in Calcutta.

And I'd prefer she talks to Robert, whose job it is to help her. Either way, chances are she'll have fewer problems to begin with.

if you delete a mail from your yahoo mail account, can you get it back?

Probably not. That's why it's not generally easy to delete things -- Gmail, at least, seems to prefer archiving them.

It's only really a guard against hardware failure, which I haven't seen on my computers except a single DVD burner (big deal, I lost only money and no data)

Then you are lucky. Hardware failure is not a matter of "if", it's a matter of "when".

more billing options - great, except consumers hate having to optimize depending on their changing usage scenarios.

Except as a customer, I love having the possibility of a pay-as-you-go model. Trials are nice, but why not let me test-drive the full product for less than a dollar? (Amazon EC2 is a good example.) And then, if I decide I like it, maybe a monthly fee is better, certainly less I have to think about. If I decide I don't like it, you just shut off my access, no need to worry about building complex and doomed DRM schemes to lock down the trial version after $NUM days.

control over your data - unless you consider your customers' data yours, I don't see how.

Unless it really is your data that you're exposing to your customers.

better security - you are running more potentially vulnerable applications than otherwise. How's that better security?

Because you are running those potentially vulnerable applications in a datacenter, managing them with IT professionals, and with clearly defined inputs and outputs.

A desktop app means you not only have to worry about your own app's security in the much harsher environment of the desktop, but you may have to worry about the security of the desktop itself.

However, looking at context, I suspect GP meant licensing security -- as in, again, no need for complex and doomed DRM, just kill their access.

licensing - Blizzard seemed to fail (there are (or were) no-pay servers working well with the no-pay trial client), despite slashdot saying companies should go that route.

Probably still are, not that it matters. Blizzard's value is in the network. Playing WoW on a pirate server is like insisting on using my own MySpace clone with 50 of my friends. Pointless -- the value of each is in the network effect. You play WoW on the legit servers because all your friends are, and because you've already made a bunch of new friends that way.

Besides which, just look at the numbers. Even if there are a few thousand pirates, there are ten million legitimate subscribers. How does that compare to any other PC game?

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[JustOK]

WTF is you point!

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[JustOK]

Musta been the pirates
r
 

WTF is your point!

There, fixed that for me.

could?

[jipn4]

I'm quite convinced someone sufficiently motivated could replicate the Eclipse IDE in ASCII format and functionality in emacs.

GNU Emacs has had Eclipse-like functionality for longer than Eclipse even exists.

Other versions of Emacs had IDEs that are still not matched by anything existing C++, Java, or C#.

Eclipse has a lot of buttons and windows, but other than that, it doesn't do that much.

Re:could?

[tkinnun0]

I just copy-pasted a snippet of code from one class to another and Eclipse added the correct import statements automatically. Does Emacs do that?

Re:could?

[shutdown -p now]

GNU Emacs has had Eclipse-like functionality for longer than Eclipse even exists.

Other versions of Emacs had IDEs that are still not matched by anything existing C++, Java, or C#.

Eclipse has a lot of buttons and windows, but other than that, it doesn't do that much.

Have you ever heard of "code aware" editors that can do the so-called "refactorings", check source for errors on the fly, and otherwise make a programmer's life convenient?

No, Emacs is not one of those.

Of course, you'd probably not notice if you're only using C (and Lisp). But there are other languages out there, just so you'd know.

In the year 2525.

[Steauengeglase]

At Google's moon base:

Bob17349: So Bob, did you get the webservers on Earth fixed?

Bob27346: Well Bob, I was going to but I can't seem to load the darn tools.

Bob17349: Well, if that doesn't beat all. I wonder how that happened?

Bob27346: Dunno Bob, dunno, maybe we never will know. Wanna go bang some moon rocks together, since we are out of golf balls?

Bob17349: Sure, sounds like fun.

Re:Web-based Visual Studio for MFC

[Vectronic]

And Bespin et al wouldn't be?

Never said it was going to make me drop all other alternatives, and stop using dedicated IDEs, I'm just more familiar (and preferential) with the MS IDEs...

Besides, i've found little, or no use for Inno, NSIS, or SharpDevelope, Java, etc, etc... but I have been tempted to try them all out, just like trying Vista, but having no use for it, trying CentOS but having no use for it.

If it wasn't for these temptations I'd still be using my C64.

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[mcgrew]

Yeah, I first saw that movie when I worked at Disney in Florida (they had a pre-release showing for employees, in 72mm surround sound), and that was around '82.

Maybe I ought to replace my brain tubes with brain transistors, but then I'd have to wait for the damned thing to boot...

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[AKAImBatman]

WTF is you point!

For great justice!

Sorry, sorry. Couldn't resist. :-P

My opinion

[disbroc]

I don't understand why everyone keeps trying to move away from keeping anything local nowadays. Programming is a task that I usually do without needing to be online. I really don't think I like the idea of that going away. Its starting to bother me how many "web" versions of applications I see nowadays. A lot of what I run into doesn't even seem to allow you to cache much or to load an offline copy. An example would be my phone, which comes with a gps that refuses to cache the maps. Pretty pointless in a lot of situations. I guess I just see this as a solution without a problem. Sure, maybe it was fun to do and maybe there will be some neat uses for it later on. Also I have trouble seeing using this to program desktop applications, wouldn't you prefer to be using the same environment your programming for?

Re:My opinion

[pavera]

Sure it makes no sense for desktop applications, but your argument is *EXACTLY* why it makes sense for web applications.

I've never had a "web server" for a desktop machine... By that I mean a machine with no GUI, no compiler, just an interpreter (for php, python, ruby, whatever your choice is) and a web server...

Having to constantly "recreate" the web server environment on my desktop/laptop machine is a headache which regardless presents no end of incompatibilities. On my desktop I run ubuntu, and I have a macbook pro laptop... now, try to get the exact same version of apache, python, postgressql, modpython, and all the other supporting cast members on those 2 machines and on the RHEL 5 servers the company mandates for server OS.... And then you start to see the problem of developing web apps on your desktop machine...

If there was a nice web based IDE we could plunk on the server itself, it would save literally hundreds if not thousands of man hours reconfiguring desktop/laptop machines across our team of 10 developers (about 30 machines total) to "match" our production environment so that when we deploy we don't say "Oh.. crap the server only has python 2.4 but I developed this against 2.5 and the feature I used isn't there..." Or any number of small and subtle bugs we've run into over the years because of minor version mis-matches, packages named/installed differently across architectures, one system having a built in package for foo while the production system doesn't, requiring either a compile from source or reworking the code entirely to remove that dependency (more often its the desktop OS that doesn't have a package, requiring a build from source)....

In short developing web apps on a desktop machine is an IT nightmare... it would be great if I could build on the server itself... Obviously we have test servers... and that is where the dev would happen, but the test servers are configured *JUST LIKE* the production servers... and its easy cause they are the same OS.

Re:My opinion

[HAWAT.THUFIR]

Sure it makes no sense for desktop applications, but your argument is *EXACTLY* why it makes sense for web applications.

I've never had a "web server" for a desktop machine... By that I mean a machine with no GUI, no compiler, just an interpreter (for php, python, ruby, whatever your choice is) and a web server...

Having to constantly "recreate" the web server environment on my desktop/laptop machine is a headache which regardless presents no end of incompatibilities.

Sounds like an argument in favor of a virtual machine. Perhaps the JVM or Parrot? -Thufir

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[AKAImBatman]

Maybe I ought to replace my brain tubes with brain transistors, but then I'd have to wait for the damned thing to boot...

Nah, you just need to switch to a Unix system. The neat thing about Unix systems is that they really boot fast. You ought to see one boot, if you haven't already. It's inspiring to those of us whose LispMs take all morning to boot*. ;-)

* With apologies to John Rose

Re:mainframe solutions, mainframe advantages.

[TerranFury]

universal access

If the Internet fsking worked the way it was supposed to, I wouldn't need some other server; my own machine would be a first-class citizen, and so long as I could remember its IP address I could SSH in.

I used to do just this. I was at a university which had a very nice, rather open network, and I could access my machine from anywhere in the world. Why bother even carrying a laptop around when you can x-forward your machine to any of a thousand terminals scattered around campus? But these days I'm at another university, and their network is locked down in arcane and nondeterministic ways, so that sometimes I can access my machine, sometimes I can't, and god only knows why. The one thing you can reliably do is surf the web.

...which is why we're cramming all this bullshit into web browsers to begin with. We've kept the Web working, but broken the Internet.

*sigh*

[jDeepbeep]

vi and a web browser is good enough for me.

Remote desktop?

[mikeg22]

Whenever I want to work remotely, I just remote desktop into my work computer. It works fine...why do I need a web-based IDE?

This is a modern take on RAD

[dino213b]

While vi and a Web Browser is good enough for some, I'd take just the Web Browser. Rapid development needs to break out of the constant theoretical-writing-uploading/saving-previewing cycle and that's why I put together my "eval2" project for PHP.

This video tells it better:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfxrt2pc3pg

While the example is ultra-simplistic, I use this every day for altering regex or otherwise previewing REAL data as I protoype code. Anyhow, the typical horse and buggy mentality backlash against this approach has been "well, I can just do php -a".

For the interested, see http://eval2.sourceforge.net/

It's a smart terminal.

[SanityInAnarchy]

The dumb terminal was pretty dumb -- it would send individual keystrokes across the network, and wait for a response. If you scrolled, it had to redraw the screen.

A web browser can cache as much in RAM as we like, plus some disk cache. It can do audio and video, and a true GUI. It can do most things you would imagine a native client could do -- with Google Gears, that includes running offline.

And when your network connection died, the dumb terminal was useless. The netbook is still several orders of magnitude more powerful than the machine your dumb terminal would've been connecting to.

there's a reason we moved away from those.

Please, enlighten us. Then tell us why these reasons are still relevant.

Re:It's a smart terminal.

[Weedlekin]

"The dumb terminal was pretty dumb -- it would send individual keystrokes across the network, and wait for a response. If you scrolled, it had to redraw the screen."

This was indeed the case with "glass teletype" dumb terminals, but not all terminals were dumb. By the early 1970s, there were plenty of terminals that sent and received blocks of text that was buffered locally, e.g. the IBM 3270.

"The netbook is still several orders of magnitude more powerful than the machine your dumb terminal would've been connecting to."

This does not however mean that it does more useful work. IBM Mainframes from the early 1970s with 16MB RAM could support 17,500 users on 3270 terminals, whereas some netbooks (and indeed a number of machines that aren't netbooks) seem to struggle with one user running today's operating systems and applications.

Re:It's a smart terminal.

[SanityInAnarchy]

there were plenty of terminals that sent and received blocks of text that was buffered locally

And today, we can send and receive blocks of styled text, with images, buffered locally -- to say nothing of audio and video. I think I can say with confidence that all terminals were dumber than a web browser.

This does not however mean that it does more useful work. IBM Mainframes from the early 1970s with 16MB RAM could support 17,500 users on 3270 terminals, whereas some netbooks (and indeed a number of machines that aren't netbooks) seem to struggle with one user running today's operating systems and applications.

Of course, with a proper netbook, you would streamline the operating system and the applications.

However, being able to run more users does not imply that they were doing more useful work, either. 16 megabytes of RAM will support a lot of text, but not a lot of images before you start thrashing -- and thrashing isn't good if you're making seventeen thousand users wait.

Some other things I doubt you would have seen: Find-as-you-type autocomplete, underline-as-you-type spellchecker, a GUI at all (let alone a rich one), audio and video chat in realtime, multiple simultaneous text conversations, anything resembling a spreadsheet (lotus needed 256K of RAM for a single user, and that's a minimum -- it could use more), WYSIWYG desktop publishing in any form...

Perhaps it's possible you'd have realtime collaboration between users. I'm honestly not sure.

I'll grant that things are more bloated than they need to be. Some of that is laziness. Some of that is trading raw performance for programmer efficiency and program correctness (garbage collection vs manual allocation, for example). And some of it is because computers of today actually do more than computers from three or four decades ago.

Re:It's a smart terminal.

[Weedlekin]

"And today, we can send and receive blocks of styled text, with images, buffered locally -- to say nothing of audio and video. I think I can say with confidence that all terminals were dumber than a web browser."

Styled text was standard on a number of terminals, as was the ability to only update those portions of the screen that had changed (something that's a fairly recent development with web browsers). Graphics terminals have existed for a long time, starting with vector graphics (where text was also drawn with vectors, so it could be displayed in any combination of font, size, and orientation), and later, raster graphics, which reached its zenith with X Terminals, many of which had sound hardware. And all terminals that could send and receive blocks buffered locally, because they wouldn't have been able to send and receive blocks otherwise.

The following link contains some info about the late and much lamented Doug Engelbart's NLS, which had a GUI, hypertext, video conferencing, and various other "modern" features in 1968. It includes a picture of the terminal the system used, complete with mouse (note the round display, which was typical of vector graphics terminals).

http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_engelbart.htm

"Of course, with a proper netbook, you would streamline the operating system and the applications."

Then please cite some examples of "proper" netbooks that ship with streamlined operating systems and applications.

"However, being able to run more users does not imply that they were doing more useful work, either."

It does when all of those users are actually working, which was pretty much always the case with mainframes, because people whose jobs didn't require access to a terminal weren't granted access to a terminal. I think you would have a very difficult job demonstrating that one person can do more _useful_ work on a netbook (or for that matter, any PC) than 17,000 people doing similar jobs on a mainframe equipped with block-transfer terminals.

"16 megabytes of RAM will support a lot of text, but not a lot of images before you start thrashing"

How many of the jobs that people do in the sorts of companies who used (and in some cases still use) big mainframes actually require images for anything? And for that matter, how many of the web-sites that people might want to use for such work-related tasks use images to convey information that's (a) actually useful to the person who is seeking information, and (b) couldn't have been equally well expressed (and in some cases been better expressed) by some text that would have significantly less Internet bandwidth and machine resources to store, serve, decode, and display?

"Some other things I doubt you would have seen: Find-as-you-type autocomplete"

Auto form completion was a common feature of mainframe applications.

"underline-as-you-type spellchecker"

That's something they didn't have. Score 1 for the web browser.

"a GUI at all (let alone a rich one)"

NLS had a GUI running on terminals; much of the original work on GUIs at Xerox was done on graphics terminals; and X Terminals also frequently ran GUIs. Note also that, as the Xerox Star, the original Mac, the Amiga, and in the modern world, various mobile phones have demonstrated, it doesn't require a gigabyte of RAM, a 1.6 GHz CPU, and several gigabytes of hard disk space to run a GUI for one user.

"audio and video chat in realtime"

Check out the link to NLS. The capabilities of mainframe operating systems and peripherals reflected the requirements of the corporations who were the manufacturers' customers, not the capabilities of the technology. As Englebart so aptly demonstrated in 1968, if those customers had wanted (and been willing to pay for) that sort of stuff, they could have had it.

"multiple simultaneous text conversations"

The PLATO system developed by CDC and the University of Illinois in the 1970s had both real-time c

Web based IDE that has existed for over 2 years...

[willryanuk]

For my dissertation I wrote a web-based Java IDE that used Eclipse as a backend (see www.willryan.co.uk/WWWorkspace for a demo). It has far more features than Bespin although i didn't test it fully for scalability and couldn't afford to host it for a reasonable number of users. I then went traveling for six months and didn't further pursue or promote it. It supports Java compilation and safe execution of code as well as collaboration. It's very interesting to see this new trend in web based IDEs. I think there is certainly a market for it, from coding on a machine that is not set up for programming to education and introduction to programming. I thought this was an ideal forum to resurface my solution and would be interested for any feedback...

InfoQ has the full news

[CoolCat23]

Didn't read all the comments, but if noone here has already pointed it out, the original post is available here : http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/02/web-based-ide Please cite your sources newt time.

what's up with codeide.com?

[nFriedly]

I was actually looking for one of these the other day, not to be my main IDE, but for when I was out and about and away from my computer. I came across http://codeide.com/ which is mentioned in TFA as well as several other places, but the site doesn't seem to work..

Their old blog is still live ( http://codeide.livejournal.com/ ) but it links to the new blog which is now dead. (last week it was giving me a copy of the home page.)

Does anybody know what these guys are up to?

Summer Release w/ Eclipse project?

[Gazzonyx]

Will your project be part of this summers' massive release (named after some spacey thing or another, no doubt) or do you have any milestones that are targeted around then?

I look forward to building a new Eclipse distro every summer during the simultaneous release. That's generally when I do my 'window-shopping-for-shiny-objects'.

Re:Summer Release w/ Eclipse project?

[Mechanik]

Will your project be part of this summers' massive release (named after some spacey thing or another, no doubt) or do you have any milestones that are targeted around then?

Release plans for 2.2 haven't been finalized yet, but probably it will happen sometime around September if I had to guess.

Try wonderfl

[BungaDunga]

http://wonderfl.kayac.com/

It's not really an IDE, no code highlighting, hints etc. The killer feature is that it compiles Flash as soon as you stop typing and reloads the swf. It's a really cool way to play around with Flash, and it's much smoother than having to compile locally (really!).

I Want To Live in the Web.

[aoheno]

I want to live in the web. Living outside it is so last century.

I am working on a web-based open source luxury resort with a grand Firefox entrance.

It will replace my expensive non-web existence.

Freely built, upgraded, and maintained by millions of Slashdotters.

test

[xenon54]

test

Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms?

[badkarmadayaccount]

ATA = Advanced Technology Attachment != Advanced Technology Attachment Peripheral Interface.

IDE != (P)ATA;

(P)ATA is a strict subset of the ISA standard, meant to only interface hard drives and nothing else. This is because hard drives used to be mounted along with the drive electronics on an ISA board. Since the slots weren't meant to bear the strain, it was problematic, so they moved the drive and electronics in a separated enclosure, linked by cables to the now much simplified ISA card, hence, giving (P)ATA drives the incorrect name IDE drives, since SCSI and FC drives could also integrate the drive electronics.

Re:mainframe solutions, mainframe advantages.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Amin, brother! Good thing we've got Java applet VNC viewers and shit, though.

Might come handy

[dblackshell]

It actually would be a useful tool, especially considering the fact that the following thing to come is direct import from a svn/trunk...

Imagine a case when you have to patch quickly your code (possibly a vulnerability in it) and your not on your computer. You haven't got the tools (a decent text editor, svn application) at hand, so bespin COULD be the day saver...

Although wouldn't use it for actual developing because:

- too many commands have to be typed in
- syntax highlight is only available for html/js/css(? haven't tried)
- ctrl+s is faster than clicking the save button :)
- many more

But as I mentioned, for quick jobs (if you haven't got the tools) will do fine...