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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."
I've switched to SATA years ago.
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 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.
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.
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.
I thought everyone just worked on their production code on the live web server like I do...?
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
Once you start using an IDE forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will.
Hrmmmm.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
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.
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.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...