Ask HN: Experiences with cloud-based dev platforms?
Are you using, or have you used, a cloud-based IDE or development environment like Koding, Cloud9, CodeAnywhere, etc? What do you like about it? Dislike about it?
I started using CodeAnywhere earlier this year to manage a small PHP+mysql geospatial email system for an aviation charity I do the tech for...so wanted something cheap (its $120 a year?) and able to teach a non-tech how to go in and make a change (as I don't want them making edits in the github UI). I was also using my Chromebook a lot while traveling and using shared space, so I needed a decent dev environment without Chrome plugins/jankiness/slowness from a 4gb system.
They have Android and iOS apps that make changes when on the go a touch easier, though code on a Nexus is pretty rough on a plane :-)
So far, pretty good - initially they were making changes to how containers were created and destroyed, causing some changes in the syntax of how a container is defined thus causing mine to be troublesome. However, their support was pretty responsive and got it sorted out.
gomix.com as mentioned here already is pretty new but has been reliable for me so far. It is a fogcreek venture so I imagine it will mature pretty quickly.
- A cheap VM on Digital Ocean close to my location
- tmux
- vim
I have never been so productive before and they give me more flexibility than any cloud dev service at a much cheaper price point. And now after two or three years, I am a tmux, vim, console pro. Everything else compared feels slow and limited.
I see the cheapest one has only 512MB RAM.
Locate is the fastest, find is the slowest and grep is the most complex but also the most versatile one of these since you can use regexes.
It's the shell and you can use anything you want.
I dislike the proprietary ones, I don't think proprietary developer tools should be supported anymore tbh, but they force you to use them only-for-x and that means you're looking at alternatives every other time too!
Can you provide me with a link or two on how to do that?
The last time i looked, i think it was "just" their IDE on Github (or other) with next to no documentation on how to set up all the other bits and pieces - hopefully this has changed and i can make the whole thing work the same as if i would give them my money? :)
git clone git://github.com/c9/core.git c9sdk
cd c9sdk
scripts/install-sdk.sh
Best
I guess it depends on what you're looking for - i.e. some new kind of collaboration workflow or a nice GUI or some other IDE features.
I do! I used afraid.org at first, but since my company blocks DynDNS domains (don't ask), I switched to gandi-dyndns [1] using my own domain.
It used to have a minimal set of things you could install but moved to a clean Ubuntu box that you can pretty much muck about with and install what you like.
For Rails, it is perfectly suited and very easy to spin up an Ubuntu VM and play.
I used Cloud9 before hand and though this was a while ago, I had a demo of an Express thing with MongoDB and about 15 mins before said demo it started falling apart.
I believe the uptime is pretty great, just a lasting impression of failing just at the wrong time.
Codio seems to have pivoted however to be more about offering educational institutions the ability to create courses etc. so though powerful, that is what the developers are focused on now
Occasionally the version number of things lag behind in Codio and that is my biggest gripe. That and PHP boxes not having mod_rewrite enabled out the box, but that is just me
By day I am a .NET developer who typically uses Visual Studio. I do all of my development on an Azure VM with all of my dev tools on it. This is very useful because I can access it from anywhere and don't muck up a physical machine doing it. I use a standard F4 instance and stay under my free MSDN credits most months as long as I remember to turn it off (automation has fixed this recently ;). Not exactly what you mean, but lots of the same benefits.
But, I do like to tinker and see what all the cool kids are using, so have tried most of the ones you mention as well. I do think this model will become way more common, but none have stuck so far for me. Most of that is that I have customers that use VS and have a hard time imagining them using anything else. But I also felt the "free SKU" on some of these to be a little limiting. One or two projects or public-only projects means I have to commit to use in my day job. I don't fault them for making money, but there is a barrier there that limits me from using or recommending it. Also, if I'm learning something new - especially tooling like webpack/grunt/gulp/yo/etc.- it can be difficult to translate "getting started" style documentation to the specific environment. If something goes wrong, I'm unsure if it's the environment or me (though I assume the later ;)
As many have suggested, gomix is changing this some for me. I've used it to learn node a bit more, and as a place for one-off tests of JS/HTML/CSS issues. As with the others, I feel like I'd have a hard time recommending it for production use at the moment, but really like it for things I don't necessarily want in my or my customers' source control. It's zero-friction and "just works" for a certain class of problem.
My _hope_ is that these mature so that 1) there is less vendor lock-in and barrier-to-entry and 2) get more popular so that certain types of applications don't need a full on dev environment to code for.
When she has an issue, I hope onto the collaborative workspace, and we either chat using the in-app function, or do a Skype voice call.
For collaboration, it is great. The environment is pretty slick as well. I haven't used it for a "real" project yet, though. I'm not quite sure how the collaborative functions would work with a VCS, for example.