Ask Slashdot: What Are Your Experiences With Online IDEs For Web Development?

R Studio by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 04:42 · Score: 0

So far, the only one that I've found really useful is R Studio server. Most of the others we've looked at have poor support for multi-user installations which we require. Another frequent drawback is interaction with the actual running, code. The how do you handle a terminal problem. I'd love to hear about ones that people use as their daily interface and not just a toy or occasional one.

Re:R Studio by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 06:33 · Score: 1

It works well entirely because R is not an application language; it is used for snippets, mostly one-off. You don't need all that normal dev process stuff.
The downsides of the "cloud" of course include syncing hassles across machines, installation of toolchains to mitigate problems of offline access, difficulty of teamwork with new team members (even an inability to work with many intending team members, because they won't use those tools and can't choose a professional tool), difficulty of deployment when it turns out that you still need somebody to where the sysadmin hat and now the backend is more complicated.
Moving to ChromeOS is a separate problem, not sure what that solves exactly. For people under severe resource pressure who can't afford a basic dev laptop, and who can't find a used 10-year-old desktop to use for it, are often unable to get internet access that is high enough quality and provides enough bandwidth to be running cloud apps.
Re:R Studio by DuckDodgers · 2016-01-25 07:20 · Score: 1

If you're a professional software developer using a $200 Chrome OS laptop with a 12 inch, 1366x768 screen and 2GB of RAM, you have a problem. But the Chromebook Pixel would be a fine developer device.

An "intending team member" that won't use the tool because he or she is stubborn isn't worth having on your team, and is thus not a lost. To be fair, though, an "intending team member" that won't use the tool because the tool cuts their productivity down by 10% or 30% or 80% even after climbing a fair bit of the learning curve is a sign the tool is not ready for serious use.
Re:R Studio by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 07:44 · Score: 1

Many professionals consider it an important part of their career to learn and become proficient in various tools. It isn't "stubborn" to want to use something out of that set of tools, not only because it is what you've already invested time in, but because your proficiency will also be advancing as you continue to work with those tools. Who is being stubborn, the person who wants to use "one of the common professional tools that can do the job well," or the person who wants the whole team to only use their chosen tool?
I don't think you really considered the "stubborn" accusation before hurtling it.
And thumbs down to Chromebook pixel. There is absolutely no reason to attach a proprietary blahblah to the development process unless it is the platform the application is written for. Even moreso when it is not even a standard blahblah that professionals use for the task.
Talk about stubborn, wow.
Re: R Studio by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 09:15 · Score: 0

The request is about cloud IDEs not just cloud environments. Makes your comments way off base
Re:R Studio by DuckDodgers · 2016-01-25 10:07 · Score: 1

Well, there's grounds for discussion, right? If you met someone that only works in nano and C and refuses to learn emacs or Vim or sed or Perl, Python, Ruby, Lisp, Scheme, C++, Smalltalk, is that "sticking with proficient tools" or plain stubbornness?

So if a potential new employer asks you to try something out, the sensible action is to give it a try and account for the fact that some of your initial slowness is unfamiliarity. Then you have to evaluate whether you can ever be as efficient as you were with your previous preferred setup. If the answer is no, and you did your best to be objective, then refuse with a clear conscience.
Re:R Studio by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 11:06 · Score: 1

It is easy to measure if it is stubborness, or sticking with proficient tools.
You start from, why are you wanting them to change? Who is it about? Is their tool not actually proficient at the task they want to use it for, or is somebody else simply asserting that they should use a different tool?
Most of that we can answer just by looking at the claimed reasons for the change, without even having to accuse the old codger of being stubborn.
If git didn't work because he used nano, that would be a concern. But other tools don't actually care, and different people on the same team often do use different tools.
If a potential new employer doesn't want me to use the tools I'm proficient with, why exactly is he trying to choose me? And if the tools he's mandating are different than the ones I've investing my time in learning, why am I applying for that particular job? It seems almost built into the scenario that the employer is trying to hire somebody unqualified for cheap, and the employee is desperate and not an established professional.
It makes sense if an employer needs code to work in a particular compiler, but there is no reason it has to be written using a particular application. One of those is a reasonable professional expectation, the other is not.
And if somebody isn't productive with the tools they are proficient with, a different tool is unlikely to bridge that gap. And if it was, and they're a programmer of some sort, they'd really be expected to have discovered the bottleneck on their own.
As for languages, if the job is Perl and you're hiring a C guy, they're not going to be very efficient. I did 8 years of Perl before switching to Ruby for those tasks, and it isn't beginner friendly if you're working on existing applications or having to coordinate with multiple people. It is expert-friendly, though. Same for C. There is a category of programmer who believes themselves to be a magical being who can learn anything in a weekend, but none of them actually are. If he's going to add Perl, he needs to get started on that long before he agrees to write professional Perl code, or it will be full of implementation bugs.
The concept of worker specialization is a real thing; even if your specialty is that you're a generalist.
Re:R Studio by KGIII · 2016-01-26 05:48 · Score: 1

One of the many things I learned, by grace of having the fortune to have hired and worked with programmers from yesteryear (think 1990s and up until 2007 - and they really did seem to be different back then from what I'm observing now) was that you got much better results by giving the programmers the tools they wanted as opposed to those the vendor suggested or those that were suggested by what I'll call "fad development techniques or proponents."
Now, at the same time, they must be both effective and efficient. If they're making things too difficult or otherwise incompatible then something will need to change. However, they never really had a manager or anything (it would have been a bit like herding cats, I presume) and kind of self-organized - which was nice. They were, in many ways, largely independent but I found that worked best for us. They were not abusively so nor was their a problem with productivity. It might be called "controlled chaos" but, in short, it worked.
I learned to give clear goals, ask for time estimates, and largely get out of their way as it was my job to give them what they needed to do what I'd asked of them. I'd hired them to do things I could not and they were much better at I. Eventually, they'd even migrated from C to C++ (not entirely a huge difference, I guess) but I eventually became less and less familiar with my own code base. It was difficult, in some emotional ways (as strange as that might sound) and not entirely different than seeing your kid go off to college (I can think of no more apt analogy). There's some ego involved and that had to be let go. I learned to not try to micromanage and, mostly, just get out of the way.
It was always a bit of an ego boost when one of them would come to me for assistance but that assistance rapidly changed from no longer asking about the code, specifically, but about concepts or how I might implement it in code. It really didn't take long before they'd whipped my code into shape, knew it better than I did, and were far more proficient at it than I had ever been - which is to be expected because I was not a programmer but a mathematician. I'd learned to code out of necessity, not out of desire. I was never very good at it.
For the most part, give 'em what they ask for and they'll sort it out among themselves. I can't even honestly say that I know who was in charge. They had a pecking order, how that was determined (it was not longevity with the company nor was it largely based on any particular educational level - that I could tell) that they'd worked out among themselves. They knew who was better at what tasks, divided the work, and accomplished it. One or two were better at organizing and they became managers, of sorts, but held no great authority. We never had performance reviews or the likes - we didn't need 'em. I can't imagine how we'd have done so. I'm not sure who had the bright idea of counting lines of code but we never used that metric and I'd have been annoyed with anyone who suggested such a thing.
At any rate, that all ties into what you're saying (I think). While you say it's easy - and it might be, it largely seems subjective so long as there is compatibility and efficiency and efficacy. They did have specialization - there was one guy who did almost all the external documentation, for example. I'm not sure what he was hired for, specifically, except he was a programmer who had come from a fleet management background. I don't think he programmed much after a couple of years.
I realize that this sort of environment is not typical today but, I thought, it was fairly typical back then. We were not a large shop. We had something close to 220 people when I sold - we had three fully staffed offices and two skeleton offices. As traffic modelers, specifically in the vehicular department, we often worked with the municipalities as consultants through the duration of the project(s) and that included sometimes being on-site during construction (though that was rare). We needed to constantly collect, refi

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"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re:R Studio by Aighearach · 2016-01-27 07:27 · Score: 1

Thank you for the comment. It was not too long. :)
I'm not convinced that things are any different today in productive software shops. However, the rate of failed projects (abandoned and replaced without reaching goals) is rather high these days, and the number of shops is higher too.
Most places I've worked had HR, but not this new corporate "HR" role whose job is to protect the company from the employee. HR's role can also be to be an expert in employee benefits, required paperwork, and vacation scheduling. They also can resolve pay mistakes and that sort of thing, freeing management from having to muck about in those literal "human resource management" tasks that bump up against a lot of paperwork that benefits from a specialist. If you have a manager who loves paperwork, you might not need HR nearly as soon. And if the paperwork is wrong, it may or may not even bite you later.
If tool choice is no longer up to the employee, that is something the employee should be deciding for themselves before applying to the job. If they're only trying to be a digital fry cook, they should not become attached to specific tools. If they're a valued professional, they should not be willing to throw away their proficiencies on somebody's whim; they should learn to say no, and just accept the jobs that they want to do. If I'm hired to be a database developer and I use generic portable tools that work with all the common databases, and then they want me to do web dev using their chosen tools, I'd expect to be told that my old job was ending and to be offered the new role; with the understanding that I might not want to accept it. I would not want to simply be told that my job was "changing" to a different specialty. Whereas if I was a janitor and I was told "we have too many janitors, we're transferring you to shipping" then it is usually a different thing because a janitor is not a sanitation engineer and is not a specialist. If the person's nametag said Sanitation Engineer, I'd want to handle it more diplomatically.
Even in the Bad Old Days where many had to buy special compilers, most people had their choice of editor. I really value the Freedom from that system that has developed. If new generations stop valuing software freedom... it won't reduce mine. ;) They might think I'm stubborn, and then they might also find some problem that they're just not stubborn enough to get solved, because they could defer it and only cared about 80/20 this week, 80/20 next week.

No by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 04:46 · Score: 0

My experience is No.

Try if you want, but make sure you have a plan if it becomes unfeasible.

Re:no by itsenrique · 2016-01-25 04:54 · Score: 1

You can run Linux apps on ChromeOS in "Developer Mode".
Re:no by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 05:14 · Score: 0

If you have enough RAM and processor power, which an "ultra-cheap" won't, not to do it properly.
On the other hand, skewing spending on developer laptop in favor of display quality over CPU may be wise. You'd want high-resolution high-visibility display (e.g IPS, >= 1200p) and mid-range CPU.
Re:no by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 05:25 · Score: 1

If you have enough RAM and processor power, which an "ultra-cheap" won't, not to do it properly.
You can get an Acer C720 for about $300 with an i3. I think that version of the C720 comes with 4 GB RAM, and if that's not enough, don't forget it's with an SSD, which is fairly fast.
Re:no by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 05:45 · Score: 1

$300 doesn't qualify as "ultra-cheap" anymore, sub-$149 is the new bottom. Even for $300 you're getting the 2GB version, the 4GB version is 20% more than that, or 140% more than "ultra-cheap".
And you are seriously suggesting 1366x768 for development? Any kind of development, even web, needs to be able to see the entire app side-by-side with design/debug tools.
No, developers are still going to need $700+ laptops, even if you push the IDE into the cloud.
Re:no by jeffmflanagan · 2016-01-25 06:04 · Score: 1

Not just that, a cheap Chrome laptop is also likely to have a chicklet keyboard, and low-res screen. These are devices for consuming media, and light typing, not for software development.
Re:no by gregfortune · 2016-01-25 06:53 · Score: 1

Exactly what I was thinking. Hiring skilled people and paying them a reasonable salary to get work done for you only to handicap them with a terrible working environment is just silly. Qbertino really needs to read http://www.joelonsoftware.com/... and think about the impact of giving his developers an ultra-cheap environment. Heck, go to the library and check out Peopleware as well. The library is even cheaper than ultra-cheap and a thoughtful read through that book will help him use his resources more effectively.
Re:no by phantomfive · 2016-01-25 06:59 · Score: 1

Heck, go to the library and check out Peopleware as well. The library is even cheaper than ultra-cheap and a thoughtful read through that book will help him use his resources more effectively.
And the OP is nothing if not cheap.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:no by DuckDodgers · 2016-01-25 07:36 · Score: 1

Right. The only Chrome OS developer environment that might make sense with the right web IDE is one of Google's Chromebook Pixel machines.
Re:no by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 11:38 · Score: 0

Not just that, a cheap Chrome laptop is also likely to have a chicklet keyboard, and low-res screen. These are devices for consuming media, and light typing, not for software development.
It's not cheapest chromebook by a long shot, but the Toshiba Chromebook 2 (2015) is a nice piece of hardware for the price. 1080p, decent keyboard.
Now you can go the developer mode route & have full linux, but I like how locked down ChromeOS is. (Safer than most/all wrt virus/malware.)
OTOH, I'm not a big fan of moving stuff to the public cloud. I'd host your own servers & have the developers user Chrome Remote Desktop or VPN into your network & VNC.
Of course, I haven't done any of this, so test it out first.

IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another lang by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 04:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

Just stick with text editors... or be forever dependant on you web based IDE.

no by phantomfive · 2016-01-25 04:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

A move to Chrome OS for ultra-cheap laptop goodness would become realistic.

That sounds like a cruel thing to inflict on your developers. Especially since it prevents them from running a local backend server on their own machine. Annoying.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

I opted for cloud storage over cloud development by pr0t0 · 2016-01-25 04:50 · Score: 2

I've played with a bunch of them. Cloud9 was my favorite of them, but I ran into challenges when I wanted to play experiment with AngularJS. I ended up preferring to work with Brackets and pointing it at a Google Drive folder. Obviously, I'm not a professional developer. I just experiment, play, learn, and write a web app on occasion. Others in this thread will likely have better advice.

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I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.

I have no idea by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · 2016-01-25 04:50 · Score: 5, Funny

I've switched to SATA years ago.

it already exists. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 04:50 · Score: 0

ssh -i yourkey.pem user@your-remote-host

Next fire up your favorite text editor. You now have a real-time streaming cloud IDE! You can even access all of your files and tune your webserver right from your de v environment! THE FUTURE!

Re:it already exists. by 110010001000 · 2016-01-25 04:55 · Score: 2

When can I send my money so I can invest in your Cloud venture? Is it web-scale?
Re:it already exists. by Junta · 2016-01-25 05:12 · Score: 2

I saw no reference to MongoDB, so it can't be web-scale.

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XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Re:it already exists. by 110010001000 · 2016-01-25 07:00 · Score: 1

Bummer. Doesn't even seem to be integrated with the IoT. I was ready to invest billions.

Re:Betteridge by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 04:52 · Score: 5, Interesting

If it is for a professional environment, you have a few bucks to burn getting a decent IDE. Stop being so cheap.

If you mean to do it anyway, why not install Crouton on your Chromebook, and then run Linux like a "normal" person?

If you are stuck on using the cloud, for a professional project, read the license agreement like a hawk. Make sure that you're not giving a free copy of all of your work to some random stranger on the web.

Too slow by citricshooter · 2016-01-25 04:52 · Score: 3, Informative

I spent some time with Cloud9 and although it was generally usable, it was just unresponsive enough as to be annoying. Also, I prefer a standalone machine so if I don't have any wifi access, I can still work. Recent plane trips come to mind as an example.

50/50 by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 04:52 · Score: 0

Sometimes you just need a quick and dirty site to smack together an XSL query or do some Regex. That's pretty handy and there are a bunch of options out there for various flavors / levels of usefulness. So it's convenient to have that option.

What's less handy are the sites that offer a "free" online IDE and then stop your flow to nag you about signing up / sending cash, at that point convenience is now weighed by annoyance.

Just put a donation link somewhere, if I use the site enough I'll send money, otherwise google and/or use the desktop version I've paid for already

What cloud? by __aaclcg7560 · 2016-01-25 04:53 · Score: 1

These days I'm moving away from the cloud by storing my data on the local file server. The cloud requires an available connection to the Internet. Sometimes that connection is really fast or really slow on a good day.

Re: What cloud? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 06:31 · Score: 0

This, plus there's nothing stopping you making your local server remotely available via ssh for when you're on the road.

No by clickclickdrone · 2016-01-25 04:53 · Score: 1, Redundant

Because cloud.

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I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil

Not great... by Puckmarin · 2016-01-25 04:55 · Score: 3, Interesting

I have yet to find one that could totally replace my desktop/laptop. Cloud9 and Nitrous are probably the best of the bunch. Both offer a nice IDE and desktop synch. However, you'll always sacrifice speed/performance and ease of use for convenience, even at the highest paid tier of service. When I used Cloud9 and Nitrous they were considerably slower than development on a desktop/laptop. Likewise, things always just seemed more difficult. If I were going to use a cloud IDE again I'd invest in server space at someplace like Digital Ocean and install the open source version of Cloud 9 (or a similar app) on the server to create my own personalized cloud service.

Re:Not great... by AlanBDee · 2016-01-25 07:16 · Score: 1

I think it's important to point out that you tried it and went back.

TWC down, go home by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 04:55 · Score: 0

So you're going to completely reliant on TWC to provide your service and the cloud vendor to have your code. Seems like it's super risky.

Here you go, here's all my stuff... by fluffernutter · 2016-01-25 05:01 · Score: 1

Let's see. So I'm working hellish hours on project X which I hope will make me a billion dollars one day... But I'm going to give all the code to a third party to scan and peruse all they want because I can't take the time to manage my own local IDE. No FREAKING way.

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Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.

Re:Here you go, here's all my stuff... by ledow · 2016-01-25 05:05 · Score: 1

It doesn't have to be a service, though, doe sit?
It could be something you put in-house and thus can access via a HTTPS site from anywhere. Be able to work from home without needing specialist tools installed, and utilize the power of your servers to do, e.g. distcc, rather than your workstation.
I'd quite like an "OwnCloud" version of Eclipse. Then I could quite literally log on and code from anywhere without needing to replicate what is quite a complicated multi-platform, multi-language, highly integrated IDE setup elsewhere.
Re:Here you go, here's all my stuff... by fluffernutter · 2016-01-25 05:13 · Score: 1

Ok, yes that I could see the use of. Although I can't see myself ever being to stand the lag time to draw the gui. I suppose if it was some sort of java applet that loaded once and then ran locally it could be ok. But I use Thunderbird in favor of web email clients as it is, because I can't stand web clients. No matter how well they are implemented, you always end up being limited by html.

--
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Re:Here you go, here's all my stuff... by Junta · 2016-01-25 05:20 · Score: 1

It's one of those scenarios where a virtual desktop infrastructure would serve the need most appropriately.
BTW, at last check I preferred seafile over owncloud, though I would wonder if owncloud has improved enough over the year to rethink that.

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XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Re:Here you go, here's all my stuff... by fluffernutter · 2016-01-25 05:25 · Score: 1

OwnCloud has improved a lot over the last little while. I'm a solo developer and even use it to sync my code between machines so far with no issues though setting up a proper git repo is on my list of things I would like to do.

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Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Re:Here you go, here's all my stuff... by Junta · 2016-01-25 05:37 · Score: 1

My problem was mostly limitations around non-admin people needing to nag me for a lot of stuff that under seafile they could do for themselves. Like creating their own groups and such (which I might have missed something, but seafile was more straightforward).
Of course, Seafile's LDAP support won't do paged queries, which is a pain. And the developers seem clueless or holding back for their commercial version...

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XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Re:Here you go, here's all my stuff... by fluffernutter · 2016-01-25 05:42 · Score: 1

Ok I wouldn't know about that. I've had root on every server I've ever been on.

--
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.

a git repo by s1d3track3D · 2016-01-25 05:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

1) No syncing hassles across machines.
- git repo
2) a. No installation of toolchains to get working or back to work - tool chains?
- There are many 'one click' instant LAMP/MEAN stacks for every platform.
b. a browser and a connection is all that would be required.
- For web development that's always a requirement.
3) Easy teamwork.
- git
4) Easy deployment.
- many robust deployment solutions push from a git repo
5) A move to Chrome OS for ultra-cheap laptop goodness would become realistic.
- Sure, that will be a big selling point for all prospective developers your are trying to lure in...

Re:a git repo by fph+il+quozientatore · 2016-01-25 05:52 · Score: 1

git doesn't sync continuously across machines, it syncs only when you commit. If you work on multiple computers (such as a laptop and a workstation), you may want to sync continuously Ã la Dropbox. I even know people who keep their git repo inside Dropbox -- I know, it sounds stupid.

--
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Re:a git repo by SB5407 · 2016-01-25 06:45 · Score: 1

Having had a miserable experience experimenting with WAMP stacks, I'd like to throw a LAMP stack on a laptop. What one would you (and/or other slashdotters) recommend?
Re:a git repo by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 08:06 · Score: 0

Yeah, and in Windows, Studio Community is free, EZ install, awesome tools, and git connected. Why would you want to do dev in a browser? Isn't developing FOR the browser bad enough? lol
Re:a git repo by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 08:17 · Score: 1

I've never understood people's obsessions with the web and 3rd party services. Every modern OS has folder sharing features build in. You can share your project folder and simply connect to your other computer (or home server or business server) and all your files are right there. Amazing! Wow! Let me write an app for that. Add ads, I'll make millions!
Re:a git repo by hey! · 2016-01-25 09:10 · Score: 1
- b. a browser and a connection is all that would be required.
- - For web development that's always a requirement.
Yeah, but the poster isn't saying that a cloud IDE would be great because it requires a browser and Internet connection; he's saying it would be great because that's all it would require.
I agree that a SaaS IDE doesn't seem very compelling for a traditional development team using modern tools, which largely have solved the problems he's referring to. But I suppose there are some scenarios where it would be useful, e.g. a virtual, part-time team where people who work in different places contribute on an occasional basis.
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Re:a git repo by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 11:14 · Score: 0

Turnkey Linux has some nice sets of images for various development situations. Otherwise, Debian stable.
Re:a git repo by serviscope_minor · 2016-01-25 11:57 · Score: 1

If you work on multiple computers (such as a laptop and a workstation), you may want to sync continuously A la Dropbox.
But then you get last change wins stopming changes over each other.
I even know people who keep their git repo inside Dropbox -- I know, it sounds stupid.
It really, truly does!

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SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:a git repo by tijgertje · 2016-01-25 21:07 · Score: 1

Any Linux distribution you like is fine, but for working stuff I would avoid Arch/Fedora-alikes. They are bleeding edge distro's. While it is nice to have the newest stuff, they have a taste of breaking down ones a while. Debian stable is the other end. Old software, but rock solid. For in between : look at Ubuntu / Mint / Suse You can install a LAMP-stack on all of them. Even generate your own self-signed certs for https-testing.
Re:a git repo by fph+il+quozientatore · 2016-01-25 21:32 · Score: 1

You probably don't understand their use case. This is a single person, working both from a workstation (when they are at work) or from a laptop (when they telecommute, or are away, or...). At any point in time they may have to leave the workstation in a hurry, and they want to resume coding on the laptop as if they were on the same computer. They don't want to commit, not even to a private branch, because when they have to leave the code may not even compile. Of course, their code needs to be in a git repo to interact with the rest of the world. So, what's the solution? Stick your git repo inside Dropbox. The Dropbox "Last change wins" semantic is fine, because there is a single user: they won't sit in front of two different keyboards at the same time (and it is reasonable to assume that the laptop is always going to be online). It sounds stupid, I agree, but it works for them, so who am I to disagree?

--
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Re:a git repo by serviscope_minor · 2016-01-25 23:27 · Score: 1

OK, it't not the most terrible idea, but still seems a bit pointless.
You probably don't understand their use case. This is a single person, working both from a workstation (when they are at work) or from a laptop (when they telecommute, or are away, or...). At any point in time they may have to leave the workstation in a hurry, and they want to resume coding on the laptop as if they were on the same computer.
How much of a hurry? There's probably enough time to do a git commit -am unfinished && git push, or git stash && git push.
I've never worked in so much of a hurry that that wouldn't work. I used to commute a lot by train and work there. I'd work up until the end and then finish with a git commit whatever the state. No git push of course due to lack of connectivity.
They don't want to commit, not even to a private branch, because when they have to leave the code may not even compile.
I don't see why that's a problem? With version control you can always roll back to a previous version. Having a non-working version in git is no more of a burden than having it in the dropbox repo.
You can always compact changes into a single big one before merging the branch, if you do a commit. Or use git stash which just records the current work, and is more or less deigned for the usecase of wanting to hold half-finished work somewhere without going to the bother of properly commiting it.
Of course, their code needs to be in a git repo to interact with the rest of the world.
I think one's code should be in a repo of some sort more or less regardless. Some people don't agree with me: they are wrong :)
The Dropbox "Last change wins" semantic is fine, because there is a single user: they won't sit in front of two different keyboards at the same time (and it is reasonable to assume that the laptop is always going to be online).
A single user makes it more sensible, though it barely seems worth it.
It sounds stupid, I agree, but it works for them, so who am I to disagree?
They're using version control. That's good enough.

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SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:a git repo by fph+il+quozientatore · 2016-01-26 00:52 · Score: 1

Git stashes (I believe) cannot be pushed to another computer, so they are useless for this purpose. So, as you recognize, the choice is between "remember to commit && push every time you leave the workstation, and then always rewrite history because otherwise git bisect won't work" or "install Dropbox, do nothing else and it just works(tm)". That is not what I do, but I can totally understand people going for the second option.

--
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Re:a git repo by serviscope_minor · 2016-01-26 02:17 · Score: 1

Git stashes (I believe) cannot be pushed to another computer, so they are useless for this purpose.
Huh, I thought they could, being just another node in the tree. Looks like I was mistaken.

--
SJW n. One who posts facts.

It's workable... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 05:05 · Score: 0

I use codeanywhere almost exclusively.
For me it went from having vagrants on my laptop to using short-term instances of linode/digitalocean for my "local dev" environment.
So, there was an increased cost (though not significant) and sometimes a small waiting period before my config was launched.

Re:I opted for cloud storage over cloud developmen by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 05:05 · Score: 0

+1 for Cloud9 (c9.io) and (I'm going to regret this when everyone else is fighting me for server time) for c++ I use cpp.sh

It takes a village by jimbrooking · 2016-01-25 05:05 · Score: 1

If you become dependent on "the cloud", many, many entities have to vote - unanimously - to allow you to get your work done at any given time. And your vote doesn't count.

Re:It takes a village by Junta · 2016-01-25 05:18 · Score: 1

Actually your vote would count. If you said 'no', no amount of ISP, cloud, etc provider enthusiasm is going to enable you to get your work done.

--
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.

Too slow! by swright · 2016-01-25 05:06 · Score: 1

I evaluated a few, not for very long admittedly, but found all of them to be too slow.

Fundamentally, doing this stuff professionally means your workstation and tooling (ide or editor or whatever) needs to be an extension of you for you to be able to function efficiently and keep a good flow going. Some of this is muscle memory on keyboard layout and shortcuts, most of it (imo) is responsiveness and ui latency. If the ui cant respond faster than you notice it then it just hurts too much to create stuff effectively.

Hence, for me at least, native ide is important. Even if it syncs to a remote host on save for compile/preview/run (so long as it consistently does that quicker than i can alt+tab).

I love that integrated environments are available online, and i love the portability of that. But i just dont think it can be fast enough for serious development.

(Nb, by fast although ive not really done any benchmarking, the bottleneck so far as i can tell is the ide in javascript locally, even on a decent pc, rather than network latency)

Re:Too slow! by saccade.com · 2016-01-25 07:58 · Score: 1

I've done some development on Koding.com, and did not find any speed or responsiveness issues (I generally work with a good Internet connection). Most of the truly interactive portion of my application was done with JavaScript in the browsers, so there I simply leverage the built-in Chrome debugger, which is great - very interactive. Communicating with the Koding shell was no different than typing in a local shell running on my machine.

Emacs by Etherwalk · 2016-01-25 05:11 · Score: 1

R Studio isn't the only online IDE useful for web development. You're forgetting Emacs over x-forwarding.

Question about syncing hassles by MobyDisk · 2016-01-25 05:13 · Score: 1

: 1) No syncing hassles across machines.

What do you mean by that? Syncing what?

Source goes in source control, so that should take care of the "syncing hassles" regardless of what IDE is used. I'm unclear how online IDEs work with source control. I am trying to think of what other things you are talking about syncing.

Re:Question about syncing hassles by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 07:10 · Score: 1

He means, "make all the stuff flow over the wires on its own because I don't know how to set up git hooks, ssh, or a VPN"

I still use MS expressions by Billly+Gates · 2016-01-25 05:15 · Score: 1

It is free for designing.

--
http://saveie6.com/

Do people 100% trust server credentials to cloud? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 05:16 · Score: 1

I have always worried about providing server credentials (even git, but especially ssh directly to web docroots etc) ... what are peoples thoughts/experiences and best practices in determining which one is safe to trust?

Poor IDEs by GavrocheLeGnou · 2016-01-25 05:18 · Score: 0

I agree on all the "Pros" you listed.
The problem I had with those IDEs is that they are really not as powerful as offline IDEs.
If you are using a powerful cross-language code completion with code intelligence every other minute, refactor, use different code navigation, search and replace in files options etc ... then you're gonna a have a baad time ..;

Re:Betteridge by Penguinisto · 2016-01-25 05:18 · Score: 0

If it is for a professional environment, you have a few bucks to burn getting a decent IDE. Stop being so cheap.

If you mean to do it anyway, why not install Crouton on your Chromebook, and then run Linux like a "normal" person?

If you are stuck on using the cloud, for a professional project, read the license agreement like a hawk. Make sure that you're not giving a free copy of all of your work to some random stranger on the web.

Quoted for visibility... it's actually not bad advice.

--
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 05:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

oh ok, grandpa. time for your nap.

seriously, it's so odd that people into computers are so "stuck in their ways" and cling to old technology.

Re:Do people 100% trust server credentials to clou by fluffernutter · 2016-01-25 05:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

I would never give any credentials to the cloud. Creds are for me, and me only. That is an absolute show stopper for me.

--
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.

Real, International Communism by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 05:22 · Score: 0

Don't you see it? It is now.

The End.

What about SSH+vim...? by taikedz · 2016-01-25 05:25 · Score: 1

No holy wars please. s/vim/$YOUREDITOR/g

If you're using a LAMP stack mainly (which it seems you are), the option of SSH and using a command line text editor could be of interest.

That being said, if you can create a dev environment that matches your production, why not git around? Where has this workflow failed you previously? Surely also you are developing on multiple servers for different projects, and there are things you do common to all servers?

For my sites I use generally two git repos - one for my toolchain (custom connection, management and setup scripts), one for base content. Given that I use Wordpress for a lot, I can duplicate some of the base work. I use digitalOcean, always a ubuntu 14.04 server, and always set up with the same scripts. I do have a test VM directly on my machine to test things that might seriously break stuff, or for dev when I'm on the go without network, but otherwise, a lot of what I do is "in the cloud" - just over SSH.

As to how this would map to your requirements:

1) No syncing hassles across machines If you're a team of one, SSH+cli editor should work - it's also lower processing power on your device. Better battery longevity. You can also quickly move back and forth between server logs and code from here too 2) No installation of toolchains to get working or back to work — a browser and a connection is all that would be required Unless I'm mistaken, you'll always have toolchains to install and update on every new site/server. So long as you maintain an easy way to deploy them fresh, and the new instances you spin up are always predictably similar, I see no problem with maintaining a toolchain deployment recipe in one place, and easily management of instances along the way in teh way you want (ansible, chef, puppet, custom scripts...). 3) Easy teamwork If the solution you want is for live coolaborative editing, maybe indeed a web-interface which facilitates this may be interesting, though you'll want to check that this mode of "team" working suites your team best, or if revision control-based solution works better for their workflows. Maybe a question for the web-based solution is, does it integrate well with individuals who like to work offline and sync as needed? I'll assume you've already had this talk with them. 4) Easy deployment I'd say this is down to DRY - Don't Repeat Yourself, or, have you automated everything you could have? :-) 5) A move to Chrome OS for ultra-cheap laptop goodness would become realistic. That's a personal preference I guess. I wouldn't try it just yet. I try to run a lean machine, but I like to know I Have The Power when I need it.

At the end of the day, so long as you have revision control in whatever solution you choose, you have a decent chance of developing on production. Now about the databases...

--
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra

Re:What about SSH+vim...? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 05:49 · Score: 0

No holy wars please. s/vim/$YOUREDITOR/g
"No holy wars please. [Bombs a mosque.]"
Re:What about SSH+vim...? by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 07:15 · Score: 1

No need for holy wars, as an emacs user if I'm stuck editing over ssh I switch to vim.
Of course, if I'm using a LAMP stack (or similar) then I wouldn't be developing over ssh, I'd be doing that locally and using source control and a modern deploy tool, which would use ssh under the hood. If I'm using an editor over ssh, it would imply either an emergency hotfix (eek) or a sysadmin task, and in both cases mode-based editing shines.
Re:What about SSH+vim...? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 07:53 · Score: 0

Emacs can remotely edit files using Tramp. Sometimes it's more convenient than running an editor on the remote system.
Just use the normal open-file sequence (C-x C-f), and specify the file as follows: /[method:]user@machine:path/to/file
If you don't specify the method, it defaults to an ssh connection, I believe. Tramp supports many other methods, though (ftp, sftp, etc.).

Professional? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 05:31 · Score: 0

Note, this would be for professional web development, not hobbyist stuff.

At this point then you should have some kind of version control in place, and "sync hastles" shouldn't be much of a concern. Likewise deployment should be a largely automated process pulling from said version control and hopefully running a bunch of automated tests. If you're dev model revolves around everyone working on the same set of files on a server somewhere and you're deployment model is having Jim FTP the stuff from dev to production, I'd say paid or not you're not really doing professional anything.

Re:Professional? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 06:04 · Score: 0

I'd say paid or not you're not really doing professional anything.
This quote applies to 90% of the "professional" web designers I've ever met. I swear if I ever teach a college course there will be no "handing in homework". Everybody gets graded on what was in the source code repo at midnight.

I don't understand by astro · 2016-01-25 05:34 · Score: 4, Funny

I thought everyone just worked on their production code on the live web server like I do...?

Re:I don't understand by JustNiz · 2016-01-25 05:55 · Score: 1

I hope that was sarcasm.
Re:I don't understand by astro · 2016-01-25 05:57 · Score: 1

I hope that was sarcasm.
Mostly.
Re:I don't understand by Hognoxious · 2016-01-25 06:12 · Score: 1

If it works for Slashdot ...

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:I don't understand by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 07:13 · Score: 0

SOME of us are pros. We work on code on a test server that is set up subtly differently than the live server and push out code to prod that we hope will still work, dammit!
Re:I don't understand by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 07:16 · Score: 1

I thought it was called "the nineties."
Re:I don't understand by cascadingstylesheet · 2016-01-25 14:12 · Score: 1

I thought everyone just worked on their production code on the live web server like I do...?
cPanel code editor, baby! I got your "professional" right here!

CodeAnywhere by m2pc · 2016-01-25 05:39 · Score: 1

I used this service for awhile to see how I liked using an online IDE. Overall, it worked pretty smoothly. Some caveats:

- You do have to be careful about accidentally closing a browser window/tab or hitting in the wrong place (triggers browser back button)
- I felt a bit uncomfortable storing SSH credentials "in the cloud" as these are the "keys to the kingdom" for the servers I manage.
- I run a local Dev server at my home office that I could not access since the "cloud" IDE initiated all SSH transactions from their servers, and my local server was behind the firewall.

Re:CodeAnywhere by JustNiz · 2016-01-25 05:42 · Score: 1

>> I felt a bit uncomfortable storing SSH credentials "in the cloud" as these are the "keys to the kingdom" for the servers I manage.
Only a bit uncomfortable? You should NEVER put the keys to your production environment in the cloud. If something requires that, then find an alternative,

Do not do that by TheDarkMaster · 2016-01-25 05:44 · Score: 3, Informative

Simply dont. If you are intending to do code professionally then you should be worrying about the security of your code against competitors / thieves /industrial espionage, and the worst way to do this is to put your code "in the cloud". And I will not touch the point of the performance of a "cloud IDE" because others have already shown examples to exhaustion. In short: Very, very bad idea.

--
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time

Re:Do not do that by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 08:11 · Score: 0

He said he was coding in PHP so we can dispense with the notion that development is being done professionally ;-)

I tried a few different ones but by JustNiz · 2016-01-25 05:48 · Score: 1

Personally I always find running something in a browser less than ideal compared to an app running locally, so my bias was a factor, but even allowing for that, all the online IDEs I found/tried were far clunkier usability-wise, far slower and obviously less secure than using something running locally.

They're okay by smooth+wombat · 2016-01-25 05:48 · Score: 1

However, I find with my dyslexia I just don't enough bang from them.

--
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Online IDEs? by vel-ex-tech · 2016-01-25 05:49 · Score: 1

Experiences with online IDEs? None, and I'd like to keep it that way, thanks.

Cloud 9, AWS/Bitnami by greywire · 2016-01-25 05:53 · Score: 1

I've been dabbling with this myself lately, for multiple reasons.

I'm currently using Cloud9 and frankly I can't tell much difference performance or feature wise (but I don't extensively use all the bells and whistles in any IDE anyway).

Cloud9 is cool because while you can use their servers to really quickly bring up dev environments, you can also just as easily SSH into your own box (I'm using AWS with Bitnami distros) for flexibility and security. You get convenient access to the files in the IDE just like it was local, plus any number of shells. And you get unlimited access for $20 a month.

Also, bringing a new developer online is super easy, and it makes for easy live collaboration.

The only disadvantages are that you need a decent internet access all the time, which can be a problem if you are a road warrior, and for me when I'm doing mobile app development with ionic framework the live update feature doesn't work, as well as launching the mobile app on the device from the shell (since its not directly connected). But that's pretty minor.

Being able to get good performance out of a lower specced machine is also nice, because it means I can custom build something and still do the same dev...

--
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.

I'd say don't bother. by serviscope_minor · 2016-01-25 05:55 · Score: 2

Don't bother and here's why:

1) No syncing hassles across machines.

Use a decent version control system. If there are no collisions, the syncing is trivial. If there are collisions then te web based system won't help you either.

2) No installation of toolchains to get working or back to work - a browser and a connection is all that would be required.

Figure out what packages you need. Then type:

sudo apt-get install a b c d e etc moar lolz hax package

into a file and save it on your github account. Then on any new machine, grab that line and run it as root. You don't need anything more than an internet connection to do that either, and it'll install a full-strength dev system with almost on effort.

It's generally a good idea to have this, it means you can set up a new laptop or desktop and be up and running in a few minutes.

Plus once you're set up you don't even need an internet connection.

3) Easy teamwork.

How is it easier than a version control system?

4) Easy deployment.

Doesn't that rather depend on what's being deployed and where? Either way though, it's not hard to set up a git repo (e.g. on githup) with testing, continuous integration, automatic deployment and all that stuff.

5) A move to Chrome OS for ultra-cheap laptop goodness would become realistic.

Are the cheap chromebooks substantially better than the cheap modern take on netbooks with Linux installed? You can still run chrome on the latter if you like, but get the benefit of much more flexibility.

Bear in mind that anything done in a web browser takes approximately 1.434762139548e+37 more CPU resoures than a corresponding native program. For example compare Atom to uh... just about anything really. If you're going to be doing "big" stuff in the browser then a weak laptop will get really annoying. For example google docs on my venerable eee 900 is now horrendous and barely usable where as LibreOffice is still fast and snappy.

vim of course loads instantly still.

--
SJW n. One who posts facts.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by serviscope_minor · 2016-01-25 05:58 · Score: 3, Funny

Once you start using an IDE forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will.

Hrmmmm.

--
SJW n. One who posts facts.

Kids Today by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 06:01 · Score: 0

I use vi on Linux and Notepad++ on Windows and constantly ftp up the latest edits (every time a line change is made.).

Ain't you got no skillz?

Re:Kids Today by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 09:17 · Score: 0

Luxury! I use vi on xterm, tar everything up and put it on a usb stick

my experience with cloud9 for more than a year by AndrewGryaznov · 2016-01-25 06:02 · Score: 1

I switched to using cloud9 more than a year ago and I live on chromebooks for almost a year and my experience was generally positive. I use c9 to develop a C app, some python code, and some web service code. It generally works better than vim on a remote machine, with much faster response as all the syncing is done in background and is absolutely non-distracting. I also have some SSH c9 workspaces running on GCE to do testing as c9 uses very restrictive docker environment that just does not suite my needs. c9 was pretty buggy a year ago, up to the point that I periodically lost my work due to sync malfunction. I actively reported bugs and they fixed them. Nowadays it is much more stable than it was but is still noticeably buggier than desktop IDEs even with that limited functionality that it provides. Another concern is service uptime. I had problems accessing my environment about 10 times during last year for about 30 minutes each, but that's not that much. As for the chromebook itself - it is absolutely great, is somewhat buggier than ubuntu but it's okay, the most annoying thing is chrome os keyboard shortcuts that always stand in your way, but you can get used to it. Nevertheless I can say that it is absolutely doable and you really get all the benefits you think about, and these benefits absolutely worth it. But what I like the most is "disposable computing" concept - you can throw away your laptop, take another one, just log in and continue working from the point you stopped. You just get the job done, that simple. I use "VIM" mode all the time and c9 has a consistent vim mode support, although much of the rarely-used functionality is still missing. Verdict: I love it, cloud IDE is the future and I can recommend everyone to do a switch.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by TheCarp · 2016-01-25 06:02 · Score: 1

When it ain't broke, why "fix" it? What boggles me is that everyone sees something new and thinks "improvement". If what you have does 90% of what you need 99% of the time..... how much change and overhead is justified to fill that gap?

I want my code on local storage, doesn't matter what I am doing. I want the tools I use to update my code on local storage as well. I care less about whether I can fully test locally. I care a lot less about wiz-bang editor features.

IDEs are nice, but, syntax hilighting and code folding can both be done by VIM, along with all the features of VI.

I am not a web developer, I moved from shell code to ruby. I still do it all in vim. If I do something in Java, I might install eclipse or something again.

I would never even consider a web based editor for anything because, it violates the requirement of all local storage for both data and tools. Cloud storage is fine for backups and storing git repositories.

--
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 06:13 · Score: 0

Yep. Since the earliest days of computer/end user interaction, the Baby Duck Syndrome has been a major issue. I've seen senior programmers and rank and file end users hang on to archaic tools many years longer than made sense, simply because they liked those programs and refused to change. I don't expect to see that change any time soon.

Check out Che by jwi11ims · 2016-01-25 06:14 · Score: 1

I would suggest checking out Eclipse Che (eclipse.org/che) - Che would meet all of the upside expectations you listed. Che can be used with any programing language, it's cloud based and is independent of local resources, it's shareable, it has a very comprehensive IDE built in but also allows you to SSH into the workspace and keep using your familiar IDE, and finally it's open source which allows for unlimited customization from you or your organization. Also for your JS stuff the Che comes with Intellisence because it's default JS editor is Orion.

Trivial? Professional? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 06:16 · Score: 0

Web 'design' is anything but professional if modern sites are any indication. Use a text editor like everyone else, one with syntax highlighting if you prefer. Everything else is just bulk that can break, causing grief. How many times have we all had to regenerate visual studio project files?

Cheap tools by DogDude · 2016-01-25 06:20 · Score: 2

No matter what your profession is, you shouldn't ever try to cut corners on your every day tools. That's never a good idea. You should instead INVEST in the best tools that you need to do your job.

--
I don't respond to AC's.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · 2016-01-25 06:21 · Score: 1

Old tools and old methods are known and you can rely on them to do the work, why change at all? There has to be enough benefit to change to something new.

Especially in this era of "oh, new and shiny!" where things come and go every week, every month, every year. You can't even rely on most of the things that a company as huge as Google does because they have discontinued most of them within a really short time frame.

Visual Studio FTW by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2016-01-25 06:21 · Score: 3, Informative

I know I'll get modded down for this, but usually only take web development projects that let me write in Visual Studio. Why?
1) People who are looking for C#-based projects have MONEY (they have to to afford non-Express SQL Server) and often pay their bills on time
2) Unit testing is easy to do...and my clients usually happily pay for a full test suite as a self-documenting quality check on my code
3) Expectations of bleeding-edge look-and-feel are often lower, which means I spend more time on the app and less time on browser-specific rendering and Javascript BS

For my own use (my marketing sites) I tend to build on frequently-updated web portal tools (often in PHP/JS/TS) and only do a few tweaks around the edges in a text editor like Sublime because just about all of what I need to interact with the rest of the world has already been written by somebody else.

Re:Visual Studio FTW by SQLGuru · 2016-01-25 06:54 · Score: 1

Have you tried VS Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/) over Sublime? It's cross platform (Win, OSX, and Linux) and free. Plus, it recognizes your SLN solution. It's based on the same code that runs on TFS Online (it's actually a web application that runs in NWJS (formerly Node-Webkit - http://nwjs.io/).
Re:Visual Studio FTW by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 08:30 · Score: 0

It actually uses Electron, not NWJS.

Wayland will stop that by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 06:23 · Score: 0

X-forwarding is going away with Wayland. Enjoy it while you can.

Re:Wayland will stop that by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 06:35 · Score: 0

Weston seems to be able to act as a compositor for apps that speak X11 in addition to Wayland. Angst about losing X-forwarding is sounding sillier and sillier every day.
Also keep in mind that Wayland comes from the developers of X.org. It isn't some hipster SJW systemd crap.
Re:Wayland will stop that by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 06:35 · Score: 1

Newsflash: Wayland already missed years and years of deadlines to take over the world. ;)
And it is an optional replacement. Many of us who use existing features will not switch to software that leaves them out. Kids can have all the new toys they want, but they won't be able to take away what us old fogies already have. Such is the nature of Software Freedom.
Re:Wayland will stop that by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 07:54 · Score: 0

Less (or nothing) is more I suppose. VNC is not the same.
Re:Wayland will stop that by armanox · 2016-01-25 16:28 · Score: 1

Only if you're stuck on Linux. Many of us quite enjoy working with a variety Unix environments, and there is no systemd here either!

--
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Re:Wayland will stop that by KGIII · 2016-01-26 05:04 · Score: 1

I suspect, correct me if I'm wrong, that it will also be easier to swap out (if needed/wanted) than it is to swap out systemd. It should be noted that, unlike most, I don't actively hate systemd - so, let's not go there. I'm speaking only about the ease of swapping back should Wayland being adopted, en masse, akin to systemd. It shouldn't be much more difficult than simply using your package manager to add one and remove the other. Certain functionality may be lacking in newer applications but I doubt that will be much of a problem. Though, I suppose, certain DE might become so dependent on Wayland (I suppose) that it becomes difficult to use one without the other. I'd not be entirely surprised if it were somehow possible to have them both installed and optionally use one or the other, depending on need.
As it stands, I much prefer to just use VNC and remote into boxes that way. I know, it's shameful to like and value the GUI. However, in my defense, I've never had a whole lot of luck forwarding applications over X to begin with. For example, I've never been able to make it work properly (at all) with a modern browser. I've never been able to get the whole desktop to just forward over X either. I suspect that, somewhere along the way, there's a problem in the chair more so than it being a problem elsewhere. Fortunately, the chair's occupant is constantly improving and learning new and interesting ways to break things.

--
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re:Wayland will stop that by Wolfrider · 2016-01-26 15:12 · Score: 1

--You should try Nomachine NX. Fast X over SSH. Supports Linux, OSX and Windows (plus tablet OSes.)
https://www.nomachine.com/
--That said, I have had some issues in the past with getting X forwarding with something basic like ' xclock ' working over SSH from Linux to Linux, but a bit of googling and modifications to the ssh config files (and bouncing the ssh daemon) cleared that up. Also make sure if you are using bash scripts that you have the proper command flags: ' ssh -2 -X -Y -c blowfish -o TCPKeepAlive=yes user@linuxbox ' is an example.
--I just checked, and SSH from Linux to Linux running ' palemoon ' brought up the browser OK. That said, you should make sure you have at least the basic X dependencies installed on both ends; sometimes trying to use X apps on a headless server can be problematic.
--If you have a linux box and want to SSH to it from Windows, I can highly recommend MobaXterm.
http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/
--Feel free to email me if you want to experiment with X forwarding again. Even if you don't have a dedicated linux box we could always setup a virtual machine. :-)

--
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Re:Wayland will stop that by KGIII · 2016-01-26 16:41 · Score: 1

Sweet - thanks. I won't have time to look into it tonight so I'll leave this comment notification undeleted. I'll give Palemoon a shot, and try the Nomachine out tomorrow as well. I, err, I have an obscene amount of hardware so that won't be a problem. I may, still, email you but I don't think that it will be a problem to provide hardware. What I don't have is a Windows box. ;-) I do have a Windows phone so I may have to give it a go on that. However, in all these computers (and there are many) I don't actually have a Windows box at all.
I'm at my place in Florida for the winter. I *did* have three Windows boxes until just earlier today. I replaced them, they'll remain at the house here, and I'll be donating them or giving them away to someone as they're only a few years old. Unfortunately, they had MSDN licensed OSes on them which means I can not transfer them with the OS installed. (Yes, yes I do obey things that I agreed to.) So, those were actually wiped just this morning.
As an aside: I do have my robot, based on an SBC, moving when called. Err... It's not actually going in the right direction - but it is moving. He even now recognizes his name, Rex, and responds to that. Well, sort of... He seems to go whichever direction he is pointed when called. He is moving and he is moving when called, he's just retarded and lazy. I'd say that's not bad for two weeks worth of work.
I've tried to get it to do direction finding via acoustics. Next I'm going to try visual. Someone's gotta have a damned library... Man, my C is so rusty but it has been a heck of a lot of fun. It's also amazing how many libraries and things there are out there now. Holy crap! I'm going to monitor the SBC that's x86_64 and see where that goes - I think that might be a bit more convenient for my needs. It's a bit more expensive but the ease of access, no need to cross-compile, is looking so inviting. I'm just a little curious as to how the GPIO will be driven - if it's going to be different with that architecture... Thus, I'll wait and see what their second model looks like or keep my eye out for other projects that are similar to that one.

--
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re:Wayland will stop that by Aighearach · 2016-01-27 06:58 · Score: 1

I suspect there will be a large set of us that love systemd because it fixed a long list of technical shortcomings of SysV init, and who refuse to use Wayland because it removes a list of features we actually use, even if rarely.
systemd+X11 is my future, and I'm already living it.
I don't fear desktop environments sucking, most already do. They can suck as hard as they like, all they provide to me is a unified clipboard for copy/paste. I could ditch the DE and just use a window manager directly, and the only damage would be that once a week when I paste between applications that don't already use traditional unix pasting, I would have to paste to an intermediate app first.
VNC is fine, but it sucks bad compared to X if you're local and have enough bandwidth.
The thing is, with X networking you don't "forward the desktop." You open the application on a different machine's window system than the application is running on. So it is not the same use case as VNC. If you want the same thing on both, the application has to support the ability to open two windows with the same buffer, and the ability to open a window on another X server. emacs has that right in the pulldown menu, and that is my common use case; I can have the same buffer open at different computers in different parts of the room, and I can pace between them and type code into whichever is closer. And I don't have to squish a bunch of crap into a common screen size; or export a whole desktop, or have a bunch of extra window wrappings.
For normal use, it would look like:
$ DISPLAY="host.lan:0.0" myguiapplication
And now myguiapplication is running locally, with the (only) gui on host.lan's main X instance.
There are other ways to make similar stuff happen, but they have different pros and cons. A lot of people would buy some sort of consumer media appliance just to put content on a different screen. Some people want to remove this feature; others want to pay hundreds of dollars for similar capability. ;)
Re: Wayland will stop that by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-27 10:09 · Score: 0

X-Forwarding is stupidly slow on anything that's not local. I use it a lot, but locally only. Wayland will allow for way better remote solutions, closer to what remote desktop brings on Windows.

Re:Betteridge by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 06:38 · Score: 1

random stranger? No, I'd expect them to be well-financed, entrenched, and have contracts to legally share my work with all their big-name third party partners.

Re:I opted for cloud storage over cloud developmen by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 06:38 · Score: 0

I agree with the others regarding Cloud9. If you go with a cloud IDE, this is the one to use. It feels the most like a "real" IDE.

Oh, and it does C++ as well, so you don't need to bother with cpp.sh if you don't want to.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 06:39 · Score: 1

Sorry, Cowherd, you gotta log in to use the "grandpa" line around here. Get to back of the line, pokey.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 06:50 · Score: 1

What cracks me up are the supposed benefits. Perfect for people who already got all those benefits from OOP, then from XP, then from Agile, etc. The listed benefits are exactly the things it actually sucks at.

"Syncing is easy... because you're not allowed to do it, you just twiddle your thumbs until the network traffic resumes. Easy-peasy, you're welcome." Uhm, no. I'm old enough to have lived that. Thin clients were good, because thick clients were out of our price range, and allowed us to share a larger system that could do the stuff we needed. A cheap tablet computer has enough processing power for software development now. The use case just isn't there.

These days, if a person needs remote resources for dev my first thought is, "maybe it is time to finally learn autoconf so you can compile changes in 3 seconds instead of the 3 days your pasted Makefile is causing."

My second thought is, "do they know that managing a private cloud configuration is harder than managing a workstation, and generally requires sysadmin skills?"

Teamwork is easy, just choose a low (resume) value toolset nobody has experience with, and mandate it. See how easy teamwork is? Everybody just does everything the same way because we mandated it. And then since they already don't have choices, we stuck them with ChromeOS too. To make sure they don't get any ideas.

PythonAnywhere by rcs1000 · 2016-01-25 07:01 · Score: 1

I have used PythonAnywhere for a couple of years. Obviously it's Python only (duh), but would say the experience has generally been excellent.

The ability to use two accounts on the service, using one as a development server, and the other as a deployment one is fabulous. It's also really cheap, and the reliability and support is first rate.

I do not work for them!

--
--- My dad's political betting

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 07:04 · Score: 1

Gosh, to make those whippersnappers stop making up fake "syndromes" to name-call him with, waaaaaaah! Oh, wait, grandpa does not care what you think he has already lived a little and knows better.

People were already laughing at me for using emacs in the late 90s, and none of them ever had a point other than "haha, kitchen sink." One secret of software, unused capabilities that don't have buttons on the screen can be safely ignored forever. It isn't like an oversized hand tool that weighs more because it has more functions attached. I'm still using emacs, and I only know 5 or 6 "chords." I have to make minor changes to a lisp config file every 5 years or so. Not really understanding what the complaint is. If it was a 30 year old ham sandwich, I'd understand the complaint.

People have laughed at me for using sed to global replace something in a codebase, and then when I'm done and ask them how long it would take in their IDE they tell me, oh it would take about the same amount of time. One difference though, that I don't think they notice, is that my way I can do a dry run that lists all the changes to be made before actually doing it. They probably can too, but none of them did when I asked to show me their way. Presumably they thought that was some sort of staging thing, and they missed that I was reviewing the intended changes beforehand. I'd use a newer tool, but Perl isn't usually an improvement for that use case.

Been There, tried that by jdkc4d · 2016-01-25 07:09 · Score: 1

I have tried several of the online IDE's. I think in general it is a good idea to move toward. I would love to see the online IDE built into my dev_website with SSH access so I can really test what I am doing. My experience has been there is a shortcoming on the testing side. This leads to me having to try pushing/pulling code in different locations to get testing done, which inevitably leads to anger. Which as you all know, leads to hate, & hate leads to suffering. In most cases, if I have SSH access, I just end up SSHing in and using emacs anyway. It's faster.

I don't think the benefits outweigh the costs by AlanBDee · 2016-01-25 07:25 · Score: 1

The biggest issue I see is speed. Nothing on the web runs as fast as it would locally. If you're looking at cheap hardware you're thinking about it wrong. Time is money and development time is expensive. Trying to save money on hardware is penny-wise, pound foolish.

I'm a huge fan of fast machines and multiple large high-resolution monitors. The more code I can see, the quicker I can get confused, then lost, found and finally come up with a work-around that nobody will ever understand, but works.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by DuckDodgers · 2016-01-25 07:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

HTML5 supports local storage, right? So in theory all of your local storage requirements can be met with a web-based development environment. Whether any of the existing web-based IDEs actually have that fully and seamlessly implemented, I have no idea.

But to me, there is no killer feature here. The closest thing to killer feature is nearly instant developer environment replacement. If my kids spill a drink on my work laptop or it's stolen, if I have a recent full disk image backup it will take me a few days to get back up and running. I have to buy the same hardware, and then put the backup image on the storage, and then I'm back to work. If I don't have a recent full disk image backup then I have to buy some kind of replacement and spend another day getting it ready. With a fully web-based IDE the loss of hardware is a ten minute annoyance - just boot up any other machine with a web browser, log back in, get back to work.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by DuckDodgers · 2016-01-25 07:35 · Score: 1

I've used Eclipse and Netbeans most recently, and they do have previews for text changes.

The problem with emacs and Vim isn't what they can do, it's the learning curve. IntelliJ, Visual Studio, KDevelop, Eclipse, Netbeans, etc... etc... have a learning curve that looks like a slope. Barebones Emacs and Vim usage is an easy slope, but if you want to be highly productive it's like rock-climbing.

Or to put it another way, once in a while at work we pair together over a screen-sharing application. When my colleagues and I use Eclipse, the other person will helpfully suggest menus and keyboard shortcuts to accelerate some tasks. When I'm watching someone use Vim, dictating, "escape colon one four two comma one nine five space ess forward slash caret space open square bracket...." to do a regex replacement on certain lines or create and run a macro or navigate with anything fancier than hjkl will give you a stroke. You'll either go insane watching the novice move slowly or drive them insane bombarding them with incomprehensible key combinations.

Happy user of Koding.com by saccade.com · 2016-01-25 07:43 · Score: 1

I moved my prototyping work (for a complex image processing application) into the cloud using Koding.com. It was easy to add custom stuff like OpenCV, and it's a huge relief to leave the system administration to others. It's great to be able pop in and get work done anywhere you happen to have access to a browser. The Koding.com guys are very responsive any time I've had tech support issues.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by TheCarp · 2016-01-25 07:46 · Score: 1

> But to me, there is no killer feature here. The closest thing to killer feature is nearly instant developer environment replacement.

Exactly, and....big whoop. Oh wow you saved time...um on average once every couple of years per dev?
90% of this issue is already solved by using revision control with a remote repository. Now all you need is to reinstall your dev tools and clone a repo....at most you lost back to your last push.

--
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"

Avoid Them by Number42 · 2016-01-25 07:49 · Score: 1

The response time is usually slow and makes it harder to work on the move, and testing is also a lot less efficient than what you'd get doing it locally. Besides, I usually avoid using IDEs at all when a properly constructed package and makefile functions with much less clutter.

Penny wise... pound... what was that again? by Average · 2016-01-25 07:49 · Score: 1

What does a decently-spec'd MBP or non-Apple equivalent and a mid-grade commercial IDE cost these days? $2k at the most?

Even if you are hiring 18-year-olds in rural South Dakota, you are looking at $50k a year ($35k salary + other direct costs), the $2k is *nothing*. 16GB laptops, SSDs, giant screens, and huge backup arrays are close to nothing.

Don't be that cheap guy. Don't work for that cheap guy. If you are you own boss and are the one cheaping out on your own self... look in a mirror, do a Stuart Smalley Daily Affirmation and step away from cheapness-first.

Where does this penny-pinching come from in IT? I think I know where it comes from, because I was there. Let's take a random year like 1989. A new 'fancy' machine, like, say a Mac IIci with a color monitor was over $10,000 ($20k in 2016 dollars). No joke. Half a year's salary. If you were able to do much of the same stuff on a cobbled-together PC/AT clone for a third of the price, you were ahead. Great. I grew up poor, with a bunch of nerdy poor friends, and we were scrambling to put together thrown-out old Zenith 8088s. Great.

It's not 1989. Especially when you compare, say, a two-year-old Thinkpad for under $500 to 'making things work, mostly' on a slightly cheaper Chromebook (I'd want the former, no question)? It's Just. Not. Worth. It.

You want your developer to have the oomph to play with VMs and Docker and whatever cool crap comes out tomorrow.

As for everything else? With all my tooling scripted up and in version control, I can go from an Ubuntu iso to basically fully operational in about 90 minutes. Might suck a lot more with Windows fiddle-twiddling (especially if you're not big enough for images and domain-centric centralized management). Syncing, teamwork, and deployment are already covered... and it's not the IDE's bailiwick.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by TheCarp · 2016-01-25 07:52 · Score: 1

> My second thought is, "do they know that managing a private cloud configuration is harder than managing a workstation, and generally requires sysadmin skills?"

But that is the whole point....since its offered to you as a service, you don't need any of that. They want to lock you in to trusting them to do all that work competently and to respect the privacy of your data, and trusting them to not go under/shut their servers off tomorrow.

Its all about lock-in, in the name of providing convenience.

--
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"

Don't do it. by Giant+Electronic+Bra · 2016-01-25 07:57 · Score: 1

I mean, if you're just doing your own personal projects, that's one thing, but if you're doing real hardcore team-level website/app development where there's a significant amount of work, division of work between team members, etc. then go on AWS or wherever, set up a trac server, install git and set up a git repo that's linked to your trac server, get Eclipse, install the mylyn plugin, etc. If you want to go whole hog set up a docker container that has a copy of your web server environment in it for local testing. Now each team member can pull a copy of HEAD, do their stuff, push it back, test locally, etc, and deploy to your development instances, etc. There are other plugins that will let you use Maven2, and stuff to integrate with AWS so you can basically run the whole lifecycle of everything from your IDE.

My guess is you can find roughly similar capabilities in some other IDEs as well, Eclipse just has the advantage of having a lot of support and many tools (though usually you CAN find a stand-alone tool that does any given task better than the corresponding plugin, the advantage of integration is pretty nice).

Now, there's SOME work involved in constructing this sort of environment. You can build up to it though over a few smaller projects.

--
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 08:01 · Score: 2

Right, but are the previews you're talking about for changes in one file?

With an IDE, you have single files "open" in tabs or windows, if you're doing a global replace you can choose to replace everything with no preview, or it has to step through each one and open the file, show you the preview, and you click yes/no.

With sed, I dump all the proposed changes to a scrolling buffer, and can review them all at once, one per line. Then I re-run the command to make the changes for real.

If you have thousands of changes of a string across dozens of files, the old way gets way out ahead.

I think is rather funny your description of being efficient and saving time by having somebody spew out audio advice about menu options. I mean, come on. That is laughable for many reasons. And your description of a regex in vim is specious; the s and the slashes are typed very quickly, and the rest of the regex is the same meat of the replacement regardless of which tool you're using. You just spell out the sounds to make it sound longer than it is, but only in one case, to make that case look worse.

And I challenge this myth that being efficient with emacs is "like rock-climbing," even without knowing WTF that comparison is supposed to mean. (I hike near a rock wall and the experts can climb it as fast I can hike the stairs next to it.) If the hard parts of being productive are about your tools, you're probably using them poorly. The hard parts are entirely in deciding which code to write, which algorithms to use, how many layers of interfaces, where are the interface boundaries, etc.

If you memorize chords or write a macro or use a shell alias, those are mostly going to provide the same amount of efficiency, except that every time you switch between mouse and keyboard, or give/receive verbal commands, your brain goes into a pause-mode where there are whole extra seconds that passed that you didn't detect because you were switching contexts.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 08:10 · Score: 1

Right, but the "as a service" case is mostly a fail. Anybody old enough to have used thin clients can understand this.

Once the service you're using is unusable for a couple days because some script kiddie decided to DDoS it, then you'll find out you need your own cloud to work in the cloud.

They want to lock you in, but they can't actually keep you there. Cloud services will be around "forever," but not every use case will outlast the buzzword phase. For companies that paint themselves into a corner with this use case, they'll find out that they can keep most of their new tooling and just use their own cloud. That is where this road appears to lead. The providers of these services are probably not intending to be building a longterm business on it; they're selling shovels for the gold rush. They already know they'll be moving on in a few years.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 08:11 · Score: 0

Funny. But when you are trying to figure out how to "migrate" your project to yet another IDE and build system du jour, me and Grandpa will be getting work done because we don't have that dependency. And since we get work done, we also get paychecks. And raises. And bonuses. Galore.

But you kids go on ahead and learn the hard way. The humorous part is that both me AND the other grandpa are both still young enough that we will still be alive to enjoy watching you fail, and, (this is the beauty part) eventually end up telling the ignorant younger generation to stay with simple tools like text editors.

Good luck.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 08:12 · Score: 0

seriously, it's so odd that people into computers are so "stuck in their ways" and cling to old technology.

Really? So is using a text editor beyond your competence, or is it just using one for web development?

I bet GP is faster than you at web development, too. Hell, I'm probably faster, and I use a text editor for web development.

Re:I opted for cloud storage over cloud developmen by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 09:16 · Score: 0

LIsten to parent. If you want to do this, sync the storage. Start MySQL/PostgreSQL in a sub-directory of your project, that's easily done since this is the way the test 'em themselves, so you can get the dev database sync'ed too (well, good enough for a dev environment where you can always load a new dump).

The tools are easy to install in Linux.

Are You Poor? by brian.stinar · 2016-01-25 09:51 · Score: 1

Why do you think ultra-cheap laptop goodness is a good thing? Whenever I've dealt with cheap laptops, they are usually slow, not very durable (random crap breaks on the case in 2 years) and generally annoying to use (keys stick, the screen resolution is tiny, the built in mouse/trackpad sucks.) As a developer, I tent to buy a high end laptop (or two) and then use it every day, carrying it around in my backpack, for three years, or more, before I have problems.

Unless you are poor, I don't really see why point #5 is a good thing. If you are poor, and you're a software developer, then maybe the thing to focus on is not being poor.

Re: IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 10:01 · Score: 0

You mean I should stop using rcs?

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by DuckDodgers · 2016-01-25 10:02 · Score: 1

Good point on sed vs. IDE for text replacements and the speed of preview.

The audio advice for the IDE is relatively rare. "It would be faster if you did Ctrl-Alt-____" every few minutes because most of the navigation is visual. Mouse wheel to scroll. Right click for options. etc... etc... A novice can still work pretty quickly with only occasional prompting. With Vim, everything except typing actual text is a funky command, so unless you want to watch someone navigate one keystroke at a time with hjkl you're going to be barking directions constantly.

With my regex example, the person I was working with was familiar with ":% s/foo/bar/g" but not ":(start line),(end line)" or Vim's handling of capture groups. I can't remember the syntactic differences between Vim regex and Perl regex, but he stumbled across one of them.

With 'rock climbing', I just meant that the learning curve for the useful features is almost a vertical wall. I'm sorry I didn't make the metaphor clearer. I am confident you're an emacs wizard and can move quickly, and that's great. But for two mostly equal new developers, the person with emacs plus sed will need months - frustrating months - to get to the point where they can pace the person who started with an IDE.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Rob+Y. · 2016-01-25 10:42 · Score: 2

IDE's were nice when they were optional. Combining a text editor, a make facility and a debugger in a nicely integrated package does make life a little easier. The problem is that IDE's enable complexity - and without a good reason, complexity is a bad thing. IDE's have enabled the migration from comprehensible programs to micro services with myriad triggers tied to tidbits of code. And in the case of web apps, those tidbits are divided between CSS, JavaScript, tons of JavaScript libraries, and whatever's on the back end. All of this crap is virtually impossible to comprehend or manage without an IDE.

If the web weren't the best way to deploy code, it would certainly win as the worst way to develop it...

--
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Aighearach · 2016-01-25 10:50 · Score: 2

No, I've been using emacs for nearly 20 years and I'm not a "wizard" at all. I use less chords than I have fingers. The whole concept that programmer efficiency is based on things your GUI does for you is specious, as is the claim that emacs is difficult. You're not a crippled infant your first hour or week or year using emacs. You type in your code, it is pretty straightforwards. Learning features is for petty details like changing the colors of the syntax highlighting; things you learn over time, that may help a little, but mostly it is for personalization. All the normal stuff like search/replace is in the menu if you don't know the key combination. Almost all the integration is with command line tools and is therefore totally optional; you don't have to learn an emacs way of doing things, you just switch to a text terminal and run the command. If it is long or you have repeated options, you can learn how to store those options in a macro or key chord or shell alias; the solution to automate those things is essentially the same regardless of which tool you're using.

Vim obviously has a steeper learning curve because it is "mode based," and that isn't intuitive if you're not used to it. (that said, I do all my system admin editing in vim, not emacs; mode based editing shines on config files IMO)

If you sit down in front of emacs and never learn a single feature, it is notepad with syntax highlighting. How hard can that be? If there are complicated things it can do, that doesn't make it harder to use because those features do not step up and stand in your path; if you don't know about them, they basically don't exist. That isn't exactly what is implied by a steep learning curve.

Sed is obviously a much steeper curve. I don't recommend learning sed unless somebody is already spending a lot of time using a CLI. In that case, it is a time saver. There are GUI tools that do exactly the same thing, but ultimately the knowledge needed in both cases is almost identical; you have to learn the regex flavor your tool uses, and different tools will use different flavors. See also man 7 regex and man 1 perlre

These differences are mostly artificial. If you're used to an IDE, you might think emacs is hard, when really for you it is that the CLI is hard because you can't find anything. And if you're used to a CLI, then the GUI is hard because you often can't add options to a command, and it might not be obvious what feature steps in when you need to do something differently. Same problem on both sides; it is hard to find things when you're using an unfamiliar tool. The funny part about emacs being hard is that emacs isn't the part that people struggling with emacs are struggling with. They need to change screens and just use the normal CLI tool normally, and using emacs doesn't change that process at all for most users of it. Users who program in a lisp dialect probably use it for more things and code their automation into emacs directly, but that isn't the normal pattern.

In the context of TFQ, they're asking everybody regardless of background to use a new tool, because cloud.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by iceaxe · 2016-01-25 10:53 · Score: 1

Sorry, Cowherd, you gotta log in to use the "grandpa" line around here. Get to back of the line, pokey.

Yer dern tootin'. Besides, it takes us old folks a while to get our clay tablets out to start cuneiforming our responses.

--
WALSTIB!

Cloud9 and ChromeOS by Tenebrousedge · 2016-01-25 11:05 · Score: 2

I mostly use the exact setup you're talking about. I can't really speak to the "teamwork" aspects; for that I generally use CollabEdit, which is simpler for one-off collaboration. I got a Chromebook because I was planning on being in fairly impoverished areas in Central America for months or years, and I wanted a laptop that I was not going to worry about breaking. It works pretty well, all things considered. It's relatively simple to install a 'real' linux distro via crouton and get access to all the normal linux goodies. One specific advantage to ChromeOS is that it keeps track of what apps you have installed, and if you ever have to replace the unit, you can just sit at the new one, type your login info, and in about two minutes the new machine will have exactly the same stuff the old one did.

Having your development tools/files in the cloud means that they are inaccessible to you without an Internet connection, however, you don't need much of a net connection to be able to work: for Cloud9 there's an initial download of I believe about 1 MB for the editor, and actually editing code is possible down to a hundred bytes per second. Creating a local repo from a GitHub or Bitbucket repository is very simple, and each coding workspace gets its own little virtual machine, so you can install gems, run tests, and do anything you'd normally do. It also saves process state, so you can start (e.g.) pry, fool around with the interpreter, close the window, and the next time you start, pry will still be running. It actually saves quite a few brain cycles: you have less effort to figure out what you were doing the last time. Code completion and refactoring support exists, but is not what you would call world-class, more like SublimeEdit than intellij.

I have been using cloud9, but I have shopped around for various online editors at times, and so far I have not found any particularly compelling reasons to switch. I do not miss setting up a new chroot or container for a new project, or worrying about syncing code between workstations. Also note that there are online IDEs which can be run on your own private server (Cloud9 among them), for a hybrid approach, and of course there's nothing wrong with emacs over ssh if it comes down to it. At this point I doubt I would go back to a "real" IDE unless required to by an employer.

--
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.

Lack of linting and debugging. by intermelt · 2016-01-25 13:12 · Score: 2

I have tested all of them in the past. Some have moved in a direction that I don't think is right for a PHP developer. They are essentially moving to sandboxed virtual environments where they want you to develop on that virtual box.

I have been keeping my eye on codeanywhere as I believe it is going in the right direction. However with the lack of PHP (or any language) linting, it is useless. For those of you that don't know, linting is essentially the highlighting of syntax errors in your code. I believe this should be their top priority but is seems they could care less. If it is ever implemented, I will definitely give codeanywhere another try on a real project.

A few months ago I gave up on the cloud IDE's as well as cloud syncing. I carry around a 512 gig USB3 SSD with my projects as well as any applications and configurations/preferences I need. It works great for those that never know where they will be and always want access to their projects and preferred IDE. Just remember to back it up on a regular basis.

Here you go.... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 13:17 · Score: 0

Online Emacs!

http://www.compileonline.com/online_emacs_editor.php

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by HiThere · 2016-01-25 13:21 · Score: 1

A well designed IDE can be a good learning environment. A poor one is much worse than a text editor, and can leave you feeling trapped.

FWIW, back when I used FOXPRO (before MS bought it) they had a good IDE, so there is(was) an existence proof.

OTOH, even if you know the language backwards and forwards, some purposes can benefit from an IDE. E.g., for importing graphics or sounds. But again, a poorly designed IDE is worse than not having any at all.

The problem is that most IDE designers have the wrong idea about what they're supposed to be doing. You can't even say marketing, because KDE Develop has the same attitude. They hide the details from the user, so the user never learns. That's what the FOXPRO IDE didn't do. It have fancy tools for laying out reports, but when you used them it showed you the generated code. (Among word processors, WordPerfect [some editions] used to have the same capability, which I really appreciated. Sometimes I'd hand edit the changes it applied, and that really improved its capability. For that matter, Microsoft Word 3.1 for the Macintosh used to allow you to hand edit the code that marked index entries, which I found quite useful.)

So it's not a simple question. IDEs can be quite beneficial. But most of them aren't.

--

I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by JustAnotherOldGuy · 2016-01-25 13:22 · Score: 3, Insightful

Once you start using an IDE forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will.

There is more truth in this than most people would be comfortable admitting.

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Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...

Cloud? by cascadingstylesheet · 2016-01-25 13:55 · Score: 1

Cloud, schmoud.

cPanel's code editor is my main tool!

How about Sage by sevenfactorial · 2016-01-25 14:28 · Score: 2

Rather than using a pseudo-commercial IDE with limited functionality, you could use a free cloud based Linux machine courtesy of the Sage cloud: cloud.sagemath.com.

The terminal they provide isn't the greatest, but with tmux and screen, plus vim, you should be able to easily create a decent multi-terminal programming environment, in addition to getting a couple of GB of free storage. Recently they have introduced a pay model under which network access costs $7/mo. This seems cheap to me. I doubt that they want you running a web server from their service, but you could easily rsync your code with your server of choice.

GIT & Eclipse + RSE by Jeremy+Lee · 2016-01-25 15:51 · Score: 2

I do "cloud development" all the time. I spin up servers with ansible so they have GIT, latest source, and my login keys, and I use Eclipse/SSH with the Remote System Explorer (RSE) extension to develop, and more ansible/GIT to save the changes back to the repo and deploy to the rest of the cloud.

I've tried docker and various other deploy systems, but most of the time what you want is a carefully versioned Debian stack install with you source slapped on top, and there's nothing hard about that once you've got your workflow sorted.

Oh, you mean, is there a way of developing totally in a browser without local software installs to a professional standard and level of tooling?

Um, no. Not yet. Which is a shame. There are a few specific tools, (I've written a few) but not a whole "IDE".

(Unless as one wag suggested you count the cPanel text editor, which you really shouldn't. It tops out after about 1000 lines, for a start :-)

I've actually attempted such a thing a few times, and the main problem is that putting a full GNU compiler on the internet is a great way to have your box burned to the ground through makefile exploits. Compilers don't like being put in sandboxes either.

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Jeremy Lee | Orinoco

Not ready yet by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 16:32 · Score: 0

I tried a few of these last year as I wanted to try doing professional development on a chromebook also (for the good of science!).

I ended up messing with a few of them, but my tools for the last 5 years have been vim plus tmux which led me to try a bunch of different virtual servers (linode, digital ocean, etc.) This was nice, but the economics didn't add up. I ended up buying a refurbished Dell and putting Linux on it. It's so much faster than any VM or cloud container-based service and I only have to pay for electricity now...as a bonus it's a home media server and backup server. I can ssh to it from my Macbook Pro or my Chromebook, and I can access it from anywhere.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-25 18:16 · Score: 0

If you sit down in front of emacs and never learn a single feature, it is notepad with syntax highlighting. How hard can that be? If there are complicated things it can do, that doesn't make it harder to use because those features do not step up and stand in your path; if you don't know about them, they basically don't exist. That isn't exactly what is implied by a steep learning curve.

Thank you! And how many GUIfied IDEs support the range of languages that GNU emacs does?

Professional Developer Tried Cloud Development by tsphillips · 2016-01-25 19:07 · Score: 2

I have tried to go the cloud route route for development with a Chromebook. (I have tried both web development and general programming using remote services.) For development, it might work five years from now, but it does not work today (for me) for professional development.

The first problem is availability. Even the best services are not "always on." Part of this is on the service provider, part is on their service provider, and part is on your own local Internet provider. I always have deadlines for projects, and unpredictable reliability is a job-killer.

The second problem is performance. When I work on a task, I expect to immerse myself into the task and get into the flow. Remote services do not have reliably high performance. I spent far too much time waiting on the editor, command prompt, etc. Perhaps I am spoiled by modern computers, but I find waiting more than 250ms for editor feedback is unacceptable. Remote services are not always this slow, but they are slow frequently enough to significantly degrade my performance.

The third problem is what I would call compatibility. Remote services offer a suite a capabilities, with updates from time to time. As a developer, I find myself very frequently wanting to dip into this-or-that latest update, feature, etc. I found remote services to feel too restrictive with their fixed or slowly-evolving feature sets.

Remote services / cloud development are a great option for hobbyists, but today I find them too restrictive for professional work.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by tigersha · 2016-01-25 19:19 · Score: 1

I would agree with the web based editor being suck squared, but sometime using a terminal for everything because "I hatez them GUI thingz" is bull.
And yes, I have someone working like that with me. His productivity is...problematic.

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The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by tigersha · 2016-01-25 19:21 · Score: 1

" A cheap tablet computer has enough processing power for software development now. "

True. The iPad3 was the first tablet to be faster than a Cray X/MP which was the machine I had wet dreams about when I was a student.
You really do have a supercomputer in your pocket.

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The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by DuckDodgers · 2016-01-26 02:27 · Score: 1

I concede your point on the TFQ because of your arguments elsewhere. (No sarcasm.)

But with respect to emacs or Vim, if you're only using it like Windows Notepad, then you are nowhere near as productive as someone in an IDE. You can get work done, and in your free time you can use Vim only knowing 'i', 'Esc:q!', and 'Esc:wq' (or 'Esc:ZZ') and just typing away in insert mode. But if you want to work anywhere near as quickly as someone with an IDE, you'll need to learn navigating by word ending and beginning, jumping to the beginning and ending of a line, regex search, regex replace, multi-line indent and un-indent, visual select and then copy or delete, paging up and paging down without taking your fingers off the normal position in the keyboard, editing undo and redo, copying and pasting, etc... and that learning curve is much rougher - and in my opinion, the expertise is much harder to pass along to someone else - than working with an IDE.

A separate factor in the IDE vs. CLI question is the language in use. I happen to be working in Java professionally. I neither love nor hate the language, but it's a high ceremony language and the autocomplete and jump-to-declaration features of the IDE can be incredibly handy. A user would get much less utility from an IDE when writing in Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP, Scheme, etc... and on the all-too-rare but happy occasions my employer asks me to work on Python or Javascript, I close Eclipse and work in Vim.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by squiggleslash · 2016-01-26 04:58 · Score: 1

HTML5 has "local storage" in that your disk space is physically used to store the app and/or the data, however the data is linked to the app. While in theory you can use extraction tools to get at it, ultimately the data isn't easily available outside of the app.

It solves the "Needs to be online all the time" issue, kinda, but doesn't really solve any of the other problems associated with tying your data to a webapp. In fact, in some ways, it makes matters worse. The cloud, after all, is in theory running on well maintained hardware that's supposedly superior to the tablet with its delicate spinning disk platters you bounce on your knee, and is available everywhere. But if you're using local storage, unless care has been taken to ensure the local storage really is being backed up to the cloud, you're stuck with data you can't access that will be destroyed if your computer fails.

Needless to say, this limitation means it's not used very often.

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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by KGIII · 2016-01-26 06:22 · Score: 1

Heh, the second insightful comment you've made that warrants a response, in one thread too! Better watch out, I'll be filling your posts up with long-winded replies that are akin to Grandpa stories to some of these folks here.

On that note, and long those lines, I see I am not the only one. What is with this trend to return to the days of dumb terminals? Seriously, I don't get it. It seems so antithetical to the idea of user control and ownership. I don't even see a technological need for it.

Yes, I get the idea of hosted solutions and yes they make sense - but why not host them yourself? Hell, I could probably run a fairly robust email server for my old company on something like an RPi - and have extra resources to throw in localized, non-hosted, spam filtering. Seriously, we had about 220 people. I'd not be surprised to find an RPi could handle that email load - though I suspect email servers have become bloated. No, I'm not talking about running Exchange on it. I'm talking a straight up, plain, email server with POP3, SMTP, and IMAP. No, no chat... Sure, we can throw in support for contact lists. Hell, we can probably throw a calendering application on their too. No, it probably won't have automated meeting scheduling and things of that nature.

We had to do a lot with little hardware. Hell, we had to do disk arrays and clustered servers as we were working with data sets that neared a full terabyte in size by the end of the 1990s. Heh, it was a mess... Eventually, I was able to start hiring professionals there too and getting the one guy who'd been with me from the start a bit of help.

In reference to my earlier reply to you - the "ops" staff, I kind of hate that word, was actually relatively organized and had a direct chain of command! Sort of - remind me to tell you about our Wizard some time. He was our database admin. He was a character but strangely proficient and rarely seen and even more seldom heard. We bought him new hardware, in 1998 or so, and I don't think he ever asked for new hardware after that - I sold in 2007, finalized in 2008. I think he simply used re-purposed hardware after that, we went through a lot of hardware - I mean a lot. There's an "event" where we brought in Oracle, they left three months later (with no product installed or working) and then tried to sue us. The Wizard was mad for a couple of weeks. Our DB access was remarkably slow during that time but he got over it and things returned to normal. He was every bit the definition of the Truck Problem. Oh, the stories I could tell - I'll spare you...

At any rate... What the hell people? Why are we giving up control? Why are we going back to the days of the dumb terminal and renting time on a mainframe? What the hell do these people think AWS is? Yes, yes it's okay to do some remote stuff - like hosting your site or even email, if you're too small. But, Office 365 or whatever it's called? Your whole Exchange server/service? The applications? Your entire data center? Your friggen virtual machines and development environment? No sir, I do not like it, no not one bit! I do not like this trend nor do I see it being a real cost savings in the end. I'm not a futurologist or the likes but I do not predict this being as rosy, secure, robust, inexpensive, or efficient as they seem to believe it will be.

Hell, by design, the true owners of this hardware (and thus data) have full access to your stuff - unless it's encrypted properly and you don't, you know, back your damned keys up to the cloud!

We're returning to dumb terminals when we have the equivalent of super computers in our pockets. We're not writing anything (and I was never a good programmer so I might have liked this feature) but we're using someone else's libraries. We don't even always know what's in those libraries. Yet we throw them together and wonder why they're able to track our every move online. I block scripting with something called uMatrix (fancy stuff - I like it, it's like an old school software firewall for Windows except it's for t

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"So long and thanks for all the fish."

Re:IDE's suck as soon as you want to use another l by KGIII · 2016-01-26 06:49 · Score: 1

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