Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Are Your Experiences With Online IDEs For Web Development?
Qbertino writes: I'm toying with the thought of moving my web development (PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript with perhaps a little Python and Ruby thrown in) into the cloud. The upsides I expect would be: 1) No syncing hassles across machines. 2) No installation of toolchains to get working or back to work — a browser and a connection is all that would be required. 3) Easy teamwork. 4) Easy deployment. 5) A move to Chrome OS for ultra-cheap laptop goodness would become realistic.
Is this doable/feasible? What are your experiences? Note, this would be for professional web development, not hobbyist stuff. Serious interactive JS, non-trivial PHP/LAMP development, etc. Has anyone have real world experience doing something like this? Maybe even experience with moving to a completely web-centric environment with Chrome OS? What have you learned? What would you recommend? How has it impacted your productivity and what do you miss from the native pipelines? What keeps you in the cloud, and enables you to stay there? Are you working "totally cloud" with a team and if so, how does it work out/feel? Does it make sense? As for concrete solutions, I'm eyeing Cloud9, CodeAnywhere, CodeEnvy but also semi-FOSS stuff like NeutronDrive. Anything you would recommend for real world productivity? Have you tried this and moved back? If so, what are your experiences and what would need to be improved to make it worthwhile? Thanks for any insights.
Is this doable/feasible? What are your experiences? Note, this would be for professional web development, not hobbyist stuff. Serious interactive JS, non-trivial PHP/LAMP development, etc. Has anyone have real world experience doing something like this? Maybe even experience with moving to a completely web-centric environment with Chrome OS? What have you learned? What would you recommend? How has it impacted your productivity and what do you miss from the native pipelines? What keeps you in the cloud, and enables you to stay there? Are you working "totally cloud" with a team and if so, how does it work out/feel? Does it make sense? As for concrete solutions, I'm eyeing Cloud9, CodeAnywhere, CodeEnvy but also semi-FOSS stuff like NeutronDrive. Anything you would recommend for real world productivity? Have you tried this and moved back? If so, what are your experiences and what would need to be improved to make it worthwhile? Thanks for any insights.
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
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.
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.