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Comment by productceo | Hacker News Reader

I think in Stack Overflow Developer Survey or in the State of JS Survey, 3% or less responded they use cloud IDE. I wonder whether they are solving some real problem that cannot be solved in desktop IDE, and whether they will really take off one day.

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After being annoyed with Python's crazy unstable tooling, I've resorted to running everything I do in docker containers.

Makes it really easy to get a new project up and running. "docker compose up", and point pycharm to the python container as the remote interpreter and it's up and running. No longer having to spend a few days getting the local env up and running on some developer's unlucky configuration of software+hardware.

So while I still use a local IDE, and run most of my stuff in a container locally, it's not too far off from I feel it's viable to move everything to a computer in the cloud. Our DS people are working like that already, with their notebooks and stuff.

I would wager 75% or more of those respondents actually are using monaco as a code editor though--it's what powers VS Code's IDE editing experience.

The killer app for cloud IDEs is honestly going to be something GitHub code navigation. Imagine being able to do PRs with click to definition, find all references, etc., without having to pull in the changes locally. It's also great even right now for reading open source projects when you are trying to understand how something works.

They are great for viewing code, but I'm not convinced they are good for writing code.

Reviewing PRs on GitHub is embarrassingly bad, given that it's their core feature. It hasn't been upgraded for years, even, missing features BitBucket/Stash had like 10 years ago. Now a file tree is finally in beta, so it's possible to navigate between the files. But it's still impossible to see the context around changes without having to press expand/(...) a hundred times.

I've recently experimented with the PR feature inside JetBrains IDE's. It allows one to navigate quite well without having to actually switch branch. Like it so far, nice to see the whole file and related files, not just the diff.

TBH reviewing PRs on VSCode's Pull Request extension works pretty well for me. I agree it is a bit slow but I get to see the changes with all my keybindings, themes and other tweaks, this just makes the experience better IMO.

Have you seen this? https://docs.github.com/en/codespaces/the-githubdev-web-base...

The closest is to press ".", or change url from github.com to github.dev. That opens up the github repo in a VScode/Monaco editor

I think they are solving for management, for example by locking down the dev environment. Not saying it’s impossible in desktop IDEs, but maybe harder?

X Windows and RDP/VNC, it is nothing new.

What is the definition of a "cloud IDE"? Is it limited to those that run in a browser,or does this include are ssh + tmux + vim, or VSCode with a remote server & JetBrains & its equivalent? If it includes the latter, I expect the number to be much larger than 3%

That might be the case today, but will that be the case two decades from now? I.E. if you had to optimize for friendliness for the next several million programmers around the world, is there potential to simplify the tooling and improve the onboarding & deployment experience?

It was the case already two decades ago, that is how I used to develop on UNIX, with X Windows and telnet, then eventually ssh replaced telnet, and RDP/VNC replaced X Windows.

The circle of re-invention keeps coming around.

Now that so many people are using VS Code anyway, it is the most perfect situation if you're dealing with sensitive data.

You just never have local copies of anything. Everything just runs on a server from your thin client.

Even useful if you need extra horsepower for a Language Server.

Cloud IDEs are the modern version of using X Windows or RDP/VNC sessions, that is the problem that they solve.

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