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AWS Cloud9 – Cloud Developer Environments
- k__ 9y agoI didn't even notice that Amazon bought Cloud 9. Coming from Sublime -> Atom -> VSCode it looks a bit like the older versions of the editors I used in the past.
- purplerabbit 9y agoI come from Vim -> Atom -> VSCode -> Cloud9, and have become a deep C9 loyalist. I love the window management, terminal integration, speed, and ease of configurability... No other editor I've used even comes close. And that's to say nothing of its being cloud-based
- k__ 9y agoHehe. Does this cloud based part not lead to problems? Like what platforms is this thing running on "in the cloud"?
- purplerabbit 9y agoIt's never lead to problems for me. However, some of my coworkers decided not to use c9 due to latency (which has never bothered me for some reason.) I use the ssh-workspace feature and do my work in an EC2 instance. I've also been playing around with running a local c9 build (https://github.com/c9/core https://github.com/c9/core). Not sure that their license would make this viable for commercial work, but ofc there's no latency / connection requirement if you're running it locally. Off-topic, you could even run c9 locally in a Chromebook if you were using Crouton -- and without having to install another desktop environment. I do most of my work on a desktop, but if I ever get together a mobile development environment this may be what I do.
- justin-8 9y agoAs cloud9 reaches more regions in AWS there should be very low latency options for everyone. I'm in Australia right now and on the old c9.io the closest servers were in Taiwan and it had a bit of latency. But if you're in remotely the same area then there isn't really any perceptible latency.
- sitepodmatt 9y agoI guess this will compete with https://cloud.google.com/debugger/ https://cloud.google.com/debugger/ eventually (if not already)
- TheBrockEllis 9y agoI used Cloud9 (pre-Amazon acquisition) for teaching high schoolers the basics of programming. It was super easy to set up and use. It really let me, as the teacher, focus on teaching syntax and principals and less on 'toolchain config', which is helpful for newbies right out of the box. I haven't used this new Amazon Cloud9 offering, but from the initial impression from the blog post, they've traded in the easy of use that Cloud9 once had for a deeper integration into the AWS ecosystem. The screenshots I saw were not something I'd want a greenhorn to have to walkthrough. I'm not sure what future I expected when Amazon purchased Cloud9, but I mourn the potential loss of an awesome cloud based IDE that beginners could easily pickup (my mind can be swayed once I give it a try though).
- k__ 9y agoCan't you simply use Chrome/Firefox to get started? I think this feature is called "Workspaces" in Chrome.
- riffic 9y agoDon't mourn - the editor has been open source for years: https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace/ https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace/
- oneweekwonder 9y agoYou might need to run a older version of node but https://github.com/exsilium/cloud9 https://github.com/exsilium/cloud9 worked for me.
- RawData 9y agoI teach courses online too...now all of my videos using C9.io as the dev environment (thousands of videos) are obsolete. This sucks.
- whoisjuan 9y agoAlso the new AWS Cloud9 allows you to install the IDE in a remote server through SSH. So you're not locked in.
- busterarm 9y ago
- mark242 9y agoCombine Cloud9 with a $300 touchscreen Chromebook and that's a hell of an environment vs buying a $2000 Macbook.
- twoquestions 9y agoBetween this and using Parsec for a remote gaming machine, I wonder if I'm wasting my money by buying a local gaming machine like it's 2006.
- jrs95 9y agoRemote gaming just still isn't there yet imo. Anything multiplayer has enough latency/unreliability issues as it is. Even gaming over WiFi as opposed to a wired connections will create all kinds of problems. I wouldn't want to introduce yet another variable into that.
- Veen 9y agoI was thinking this would be pretty nice combined with a 12.9 inch iPad Pro.
- suyash 9y agoBetter with Tablet like iPad or Droid yes as you get more bang for your buck
- bdcravens 9y agoI tested (I’m sitting in Reinvent keynote with a 10” iPad Pro with Smart Keyboard) and it gets stuck on connecting.
- barake 9y agoTwitter suggests they’re having load issues. Should have prewarmed those laps balancers!
- 9y ago
- PaybackTony 9y agoI've used c9.io for years. You're trading some nice IDE features you'll get with VSCode or others for convenience, but not as many as you'd think. Although the interface is rather out-dated, it's a solid IDE and I thoroughly enjoy being able to just walk away from my code and pick it up anywhere on anything. With EC2 integration, it may cut out what I had been doing, which was turn up a digital ocean droplet and use the SSH workspace in c9.io and boom, I had a full VM to dev on that anyone can reach anywhere.
- monkmartinez 9y agoEC2 seems like it would be considerably more expensive than a DO droplet over time.
- TimJRobinson 9y agoAWS Cloud9 also supports SSH workspaces :) (I work for AWS Cloud9)
- MentallyRetired 9y agoWhat are you doing on hacker news? Go add a mobile breakpoint so I can ditch my laptop altogether. ;) (Fully converted to C9 6 months ago)
- pooktrain 9y agoIt would be amazing if this integrated with EKS to easily create remote k8s clusters for development. I couldn't tell from this press release if that's a possibility though.
- mattpk 9y agoIsn't Cloud9 an e-sports organization too? There are two cloud9s, wondering where the Cloud[1-8]s went.
- oneweekwonder 9y agoThe brand of bed I sleep on is cloud9?!
- nulagrithom 9y agohttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cloud_nine https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cloud_nine
- empath75 9y agoThis points out the risk of using idiomatic English for brand names for a global company. People are going to be confused.
- bdcravens 9y agoAfter a quick check it looks like it’s incompatible with iPad Pro (paired with a keyboard that would be great if it worked)
- MentallyRetired 9y agoThe only issue, from my understanding, is the arrow keys not working. Ace editor just pushed an update that fixes the issue, though it's not yet integrated into C9. I use a note 8 with a Dex dock, and I'm kinda dying for full mobile support on C9.
- ohstopitu 9y agoI've been using c9 everytime I wanted to quickly prototype stuff (and not setup the toolchain) and destroy workspaces when I'm done. I love this integration with AWS. Now I can just get a nice Chromebook and not necessarily spend 1000s on a Macbook (not saying AWS Cloud9 is there yet as an editor to compare against VS Code/Sublime etc.) but it's definitely awesome and I hope one day it'll get there.
- movedx 9y agoLearn Vim and use it in tmux on a VM or even in a Docker container you blow away when you're done. You can use a Raspberry Pi then :P
- ohstopitu 9y agoI've tried to learn vim multiple times (mainly so i could have a cheap vm + mosh to use when i'm around). But I've yet to get used to vim coming from a sublime/vscode/intellij background. (I can use vim to do the mundane stuff, but developing stuff solely on vim appears slightly more difficult)
- oneweekwonder 9y agoIt is really easy as[0]: git clone git://github.com/c9/core.git c9sdk cd c9sdk scripts/install-sdk.sh to get c9 installed. But the license[1] :( There is a cloud9 v2[2] alterantive but ide.c9.io just more polished. [0]: https://github.com/c9/core#installation https://github.com/c9/core#installation [1]: https://github.com/c9/core/blob/master/LICENSE-COMMERCIAL-USE https://github.com/c9/core/blob/master/LICENSE-COMMERCIAL-US... [2]: https://github.com/exsilium/cloud9 https://github.com/exsilium/cloud9
- msumpter 9y agoThere are also a few docker based installation options for self-hosting too. I created one as well to run the container as my local user to not muck with file permissions https://github.com/msumpter/docker-cloud9-ide https://github.com/msumpter/docker-cloud9-ide
- nategri 9y agoThis decade sure loves editors written in JavaScript
- fcoury 9y agoDid anyone succeed creating a new environment? I tried from CodeStar but didn't find anything like Cloud9.
- MentallyRetired 9y agoI've been using c9.io for about 6 months now as my sole IDE for my own projects (I'm 100% node/react/etc). It's been fantastic. I really wish they added some breakpoints and mobile support, because coding on the go isn't amazing, but I can see the potential.
- seanwilson 9y agoI really wish Amazon would choose more intuitive names for their AWS products instead of trying to be clever especially given they must have around 100 products now. AWS Cloud IDE or AWS IDE (cloud seems redundant) would give you a good idea what this is without having to click the link for example. Recently we've had AWS Lightsail, Fargate, Greengrass and Sagemaker which all give you zero hint at what they are unless you read more plus they're hard to remember. Even EC2, RDS and S3 should have been given better names.
- codefined 9y agoI quite like this[0] article on what AWS products should have been called. [0] https://www.expeditedssl.com/aws-in-plain-english https://www.expeditedssl.com/aws-in-plain-english
- cosmie 9y agoCloud9 was the name of the IDE before AWS bought it in 2016[1]. They just wrapped it under the AWS umbrella now with tight AWS integration/support out of the box. [1] https://c9.io/blog/great-news/ https://c9.io/blog/great-news/
- deanCommie 9y agoYou completely undermined your whole point with your last sentence. I get that Lightsail isn't intuitive, but what could be more simpler or easier to comprehend than Relational Database Service or Simple Storage Service?
- abiox 9y agobased on context i suspect they were talking about the use of initialisms, rather than proper/full names.
- seanwilson 9y ago> I get that Lightsail isn't intuitive, but what could be more simpler or easier to comprehend than Relational Database Service or Simple Storage Service? Nobody calls those products by their expanded names though. Why not just AWS Storage or AWS Database? Google for example has Google Cloud Storage and Google Cloud SQL. I get that it becomes trickier when you've got overlapping products but you can't even guess the domain of AWS products from the name they're so obtuse.
- RawData 9y agoSo disappointed with this! I teach coding courses online...I've published dozens of courses teaching many different programming languages to thousands of students. In every single course, I recommend and use c9.io as the dev environment. In one stupid swoop, Amazon has made all my courses obsolete. Now people watching my videos can't create an account on C9, they have to sign up for aws and use the completely different interface. People can no longer follow along with the thousands of videos I've created. I get that you bought C9 and want to integrate it. But why close down c9.io to new accounts? Why can't they both exist? So very disappointed...
- fokinsean 9y agoIt's unfortunate that it makes your videos out of date, however you chose to depend on cloud9. You could have used any other dozen non cloud based editors out there. Definitely a lesson to everyone to be cognizant of their dependencies.
- RawData 9y agoYeah, I went with the one backed by Amazon...stupid me.
- clhodapp 9y agoSoftware changes. Any time you take up a dependency from anyone, part of what you are signing up for is tracking the changes in it over time.
- sangaya 9y agoSounds like you didn't anticipate they would ever change the user experience. Perhaps you can slice out ux portions of video separate from portions teaching programming concepts. Then you can build a better product that is resilient to change. Not all is lost. It's just a lesson to be learned from.
- SkyPuncher 9y agoWith all due respect, it kind of sounds like you put all of your eggs in one basket. Even if c9 wasn't bought, it's a bit short sighted to rely so heavily on a single service that has plenty of good alternatives.
- Naac 9y agoFor those looking for a similar, but open source equivalent cloud based IDE, Eclipse Che[0] looks really promising. [0] https://www.eclipse.org/che/ https://www.eclipse.org/che/
- mcroft 9y agoIt's come a long way. I was aware of Codenvy years ago and recently became aware that they seem to have joined the Eclipse Che effort. The main thing missing from Che, for me, was a lot of nice, easy plugins to deploy to cloud services. You can run your app in the container very easily, but it would be nice to be able to push to, say, Heroku right from the IDE. Apparently Red Hat have acquired Codenvy now, so it will be interesting to see if they add some integration for OpenShift (their own repackaged Kubernetes).
- justin-8 9y agoIs OpenShift backed by Kubernetes now? I used them years ago and it was... not great
- bmicklea 9y agoI'm the project lead for Che and can confirm that Red Hat will be contributing changes that will allow Che to run on OpenShift, but it will also roll in most of the enterprise features that were previously only available in the proprietary licensed Codenvy product. https://www.eclipse.org/che/ https://www.eclipse.org/che/
- santiagobasulto 9y agoWe're just starting to analyze Che for our coding school. Wouldn't all this just be possible with the Terminal? I'm not saying plugins aren't good, just trying to see if the terminal is a full featured one that would support something like, for example, installing the heroku toolbelt. I haven't even started with a real test, just reading about it, so sorry for my lack of research, I'm just reading through the features (https://www.eclipse.org/che/features/ https://www.eclipse.org/che/features/) and saw the terminal, which is fundamental for us.
- ajhit406 9y agoNot surprising to see the common complaints from learn-to-code authors about disrupting their courseware. We heard this a lot at Nitrous.io and struggled with the importance of the beginner market to our business. When considering Nitrous as a viable business, I'd talk a lot about the "developer sophistication spectrum" and the challenges of one single product or service attempting to meet the needs of a lot of different types of developers. On the newbie side of the spectrum, serving the hot "learn to code" market means scaling your potential market size by orders of magnitude. There is some product-market fit here as newbies don't really have substitutes ("what's a development environment?" they'd often remark), but the SaaS economics of selling tooling to newbies was atrocious. Selling to learn-to-code means you're dealing with an incredibly fickle audience where 95% abandon their plans to become a professional programmer within a few months. The other ~5% who become full-time programmers are dedicated enough to their craft to learn about their OS and their options to customize the local development workflow. So they naturally also churn. (I don't have any knowledge of the market, but I'd imagine courseware providers attempt to charge 100% up-front to account for the extremely high churn. At least, that's how I'd charge.) So basically all the cloud IDEs are getting hundreds of thousands of signups from a lot of newbies saying "We love [Nitrous, Cloud9, Koding, etc...]!" but not wanting to pay for the infrastructure and churning at unsustainable rates. On the less sophisticated side of the spectrum, I think there is potential for a viable cloud IDE business, but I think it needs to be closely coupled with a content platform like Treehouse, Coursera or CodeAcademy. I haven't looked at any of them recently, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have in-house teams working to improve the editor experience and provide stateful experiences with dedicated cloud compute & storage. We had a tightly coupled integration with the Flatiron School and it was a pretty solid experience but just wasn't a big enough business for us to scale. So in reality these businesses really just look like a content / courseware business that has a really great cloud development experience. But it's clearly built for people learning to code and they're paying for the courseware, not for the editor. As you move up the sophistication spectrum, developers begin to experience "cognitive dissonance" when considering how much their time is really worth. That is, when they know how to setup, configure or troubleshoot something themselves, they underestimate the time they spend every month performing those tasks. We spent a ton of time doing deep customer research with excellent engineering teams at Airbnb, LinkedIn, Shopify, etc... You'd be extremely surprised at just how much time it takes for the average developer at a top-tier engineering org -- in some cases, new developers took 3-4 weeks to setup their dev environment. But after setting up a new environment the other dev ops problems start to spider into a web of complex and proprietary issues that are difficult to create compelling marketing / sales presentations. It's like - everyone knows it sucks and it's broken, but nobody quite knows the solution. Which is why a lot of the solutions emerge from open source projects that solve specific issues organically and then expand into powerful platforms that cohesively solve a set of interesting ops problems (e.g. Hashicorp). This is an oversimplification of the complexities of the developer market - as there is also a spectrum of sophistication within the professional developer market itself. The "intermediate" professional developer tends to be the best market fit right now for cloud development / IDEs, as they often are self-taught and know how to code, but are often not as versed in debugging low-level issues, but usually are more price sensitive to their more sophisticated counterparts (who don't want to use the service in the first place). In any case, I remember reading a HN comment about the nitrous.io shutdown [1] and feeling bad about not opening up more so I suppose this will provide some color. People loved our service and we honestly loved building it, but business is hard and we weren't able to uncover the right strategic focus. Hopefully Coursera, Treehouse, CodeAcademy, etc... will continue to fill in the gaps for the beginner market - but since those will be tightly coupled with their courseware, it's going to be a difficult spot to be in for the independent educator who is attempting to monetize their own material. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841858
- sdsdsdsdsds 9y agoWhat is the pricing for this? I read the faq (https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/faqs/ https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/faqs/), It seems like cost is included in EC2 instances.
- whoisjuan 9y agoIt's free. You only pay for the computing of the EC2 instance.
- Arqu 9y agoNot sure why people claim they lost everything, on the bottom of the page it says: Things to Know There are no additional charges for this service beyond the underlying compute and storage. c9.io continues to run for existing users. You can continue to use all the features of c9.io and add new team members if you have a team account. In the future, we will provide tools for easy migration of your c9.io workspaces to AWS Cloud9. AWS Cloud9 is available in the US West (Oregon), US East (Ohio), US East (N.Virginia), EU (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Singapore) regions. I can’t wait to see what you build with AWS Cloud9!
- RawData 9y agoI can add team members if they already have an account...if not, there seems to be no way for them to sign up.
- linsomniac 9y agoI've dabbled with c9 before Amazon ingested them. It's part of my experiment to see if I can use ChromeOS for my home machine, and so far it's going great. At work I have a 64GB machine with 3 monitors and Ergodox, but for home I don't need a lot. I've been able to get ChromeOS to do OpenVPN and SSH, which cover 90% of work responsibilities from home. Otherwise, I'm mostly in a browser, or SSHing to my personal EC2 box. I don't get much programming time lately, but that is the remainder of it, largely on github. So c9 is something I need to investigate more. So far ChromeOS is working great, and is far easier to maintain than Linux or Windows. It is less capable in some ways, but I don't really need those ways at home.
- zengid 9y agoI'd be interested to see if google responds to this with something for Firebase and GCE. The browser based editor for Google Apps Script isn't too bad, so they might be able to expand on that.
- znpy 9y agoIf anyone is wondering there is a mostly-free-as-in-free-speech, self-hosted alternative: Eclipse Che. https://www.eclipse.org/che/ https://www.eclipse.org/che/
- filereaper 9y agoThank you! I've been looking for something like this for years!
- znpy 9y agoHappy to help! I think it is a very good fit with the latest high-ram-low-price instances from digitalocean.
- mark_l_watson 9y agoQ: I have tried starting up two IDE sessions - neither was successful. The IDE window shows a spinning Connecting graphic and never finishes initializing - waited 20 minutes both times. Cloud9 growing pains?