7 ms·

I don't want to sound arrogant, but can someone please try to explain to me what is the appeal of web-based IDEs for non-web development? The “feature” bullet p

by q3k 12y ago

I don't want to sound arrogant, but can someone please try to explain to me what is the appeal of web-based IDEs for non-web development? The “feature” bullet points from their site do not really speak to me, and it overall still seems like a solution in search of a problem. I'd seriously like to hear some stories from people who use such solutions and environments. The only reason I can think of for the existence and continuous implementations of this idea is when you regularly develop on different machines where you can't set up development environments. And here again I can't imagine why such a thing would ever happen to a typical programmer, let alone to a team of developers (presumably at a company).

hanief 12y ago
I use Sublime Text 3 + GOSublime on my Mac and it has been a nice experience for developing golang apps. But I can see the appeal of web based IDE when combined with tools like nitrous.io, where your development tools are all in the cloud and you don't have to setup everything local just to start coding.
- thejosh 12y ago
  How do you find debugging? Debugging was one of the primary reasons of moving away from Sublime3 for me, though I didn't try Sublime with Go.
  - hanief 12y ago
    Debugging is not ST's strong point for sure, but you can use https://github.com/quarnster/SublimeGDB https://github.com/quarnster/SublimeGDB.
  - kyrra 12y ago
    From what I've seen, debuggers are a last-resort for most Go devs. GDB sorta works but it's not a great experience. The Go team is working on ogle[0], but it's a very early prototype at this point so who knows what they intend with it. Most Go devs use logging/printing to debug. Mainly because of the prolific use of Goroutines, properly debugging an app can be very difficult. [0] https://code.google.com/p/ogle/ https://code.google.com/p/ogle/
- laumars 12y ago
  Sublime 3 + GoSublime is my correct set up as well, and as nice as it is, I do still miss some features from LiteIDE - namely the class view (which is handy for larger projects). Sadly this feature seems to be broken (empty box; doesn't populate with any classes) on my ArchLinux box and after hours of trial and error trying to fix the damn thing, it still doesn't populate. :( Actually, if anyone else has any experience here I'd gratefully welcome it.
pjmlp 12y ago
I also don't get the point.
- BruceM 12y ago
  Btw, I sent you an email on a somewhat related topic recently.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    I saw it, just had a very busy week. I reply to it still today.
shurcooL 12y ago
One advantage would be that any improvements to the web IDE would directly benefit all its users. On the other hand, improvements you make to your personal local dev environment are local and not helpful to others. Consider the time it took you, when learning Go, to setup gofmt on save, then after some time you might discover goimports and start using that. A newbie coming into Go will not have the benefit of goimports-on-save the way you do. However, if they use the same web IDE, they will have the same good initial experience as you. Just answering the question directly... That is one advantage. (Also, lots of people are using an outdated version of goimports with bugs that have been fixed upstream; this should be a lesser problem with a web IDE.)
- pjmlp 12y ago
  One of the great features IDEs have over plain text editors is integrated debugging experience. How do you have that in a Web IDE? Specially taking into account all the use cases a programming language is used for.
- stephenr 12y ago
  I don't use Go so I don't know the specifics of the tools you mentioned but any desktop IDE targeted at or supporting Go would very likely a) support stuff like syntax formatting out of the box and b) have a plugin system for less-common functionality and c) still allow you to define your own custom commands to call external tools/scripts.
andrewchambers 12y ago
Sometimes I'd like to host my IDE online so i can just pick up my work from anywhere, then run my tests from anywhere. Maybe thats one advantage.
hobo_mark 12y ago
For me it would be instant, remote collaboration. Unfortunately no web-based IDE offers that, as far as I know. Google docs for code anyone?
- tokenizerrr 12y ago
  https://www.nitrous.io/ https://www.nitrous.io/ does something like that, they're not open source or free however (though they do have a free plan).
- xyclos 12y ago
  Cloud9 offers that. https://c9.io/ https://c9.io/
- jasongrout 12y ago
  SageMathCloud (https://cloud.sagemath.com https://cloud.sagemath.com) offers collaborative editing of files, IPython and Sage notebooks, and latex documents, and terminal sessions. Really, it's like a collaborative unix account. It doesn't have a debugger, etc., so it's definitely not a full-blown ide, but it does have syntax highlighting and a shell.
flohofwoe 12y ago
Main point to me would be that it would work automatically on every platform and without needing setup/installation/updating, so I could switch between a Chromebook, a Mac, PC with Windows or Linux without even having to think about whether the IDE has been ported to that platform. If there would be a practical IDE solution running in the browser (or Chromium as offline package) for C++ which replaces VStudio/Xcode/QtCreator I would switch in an instant.
- niutech 12y ago
  There are some decent C++ web IDEs, like https://www.codebox.io/stack/c https://www.codebox.io/stack/c or https://koding.com https://koding.com But what is the purpose of creating yet another Web IDE (for Go) if there are already many established open source solutions like Eclipse Orion? They could just add a Go code completion and a build service to it.
giancarlostoro 12y ago
As someone who wants to see more projects like this one I'll just explain what I see. Instead of opening up a full blown IDE UI 10 times, you could easily open up 10 browser tabs each separated by a web server instance. You can leave your project from one computer, go to the next one and continue. Instead of sending a friend a paste-bin to help you, you could easily link them to where you're working at, and what you're stuck with. No need to SSH or connect directly to a server, when you can indirectly edit files. I see such a tool being useful for PHP / Web admins, provided said tool is setup secure (and hidden very well as a security fall back). Sort of the same way PHPMyAdmin is used, minus the PHP back-end. There's plenty of benefits to web based desktop applications, install once, run from everywhere, including devices that cannot possibly run an IDE but can run a browser, like computers with terrible processing / ram speeds, or tablets.
- stephenr 12y ago
  Multiple desktop IDEs/editors have true collaborative editing, where both parties can interact at the same time (ie two, user specific cursors) As for the "edit files via ssh". Just stop. Please. This is why we can't have nice things. Etc. If you want to collaborate that's great, but live editing files on a server via ssh is such a bad idea I can't believe I have to say so in 2014. Think of it like the tech equivalent of "don't let your 6 month old baby drive a bus on an icy road at night after a pub crawl"
  - crux 12y ago
    This sort of tone is toxic and anachronistic in the extreme. Please consider the sort of environment you contribute to when you relate to strangers in a public community in this way.
    - stephenr 12y ago
      sorry I don't believe in sugar coating the message. But this is HN so I'm sure people think it's more important to make friends and sing Kumbaya than actually stopping ridiculously bad practices.
jayd16 12y ago
At least you wont hear "it runs on my machine" because it never ran on your machine.
veidr 12y ago
Although I don't think there is any web-based IDE that currently exists[1] that provides a remotely acceptable level of usability (even for web development), I buy into the dream. I would love to code right up until 17:15, then go pick up my kid, have dinner, play with his trains or Duplo blocks, and then at 18:45 when my wife takes the kid in for his bath, be able open my laptop at the dinner table and get right back to the work I was doing, with the same code editors and test cases open, breakpoint on the same line of code, and take advantage of that 23 minutes or so by picking up right where I left off. I used to just have a beefy workstation dialed in at my office, and do all my coding there. When I got in the zone, I'd just stay as long as I wanted. It was having kids that broke that arrangement for me, but I can see how it could be different things for other people. The change is that I now have things I have to (and want to) do, that require me to be certain places at certain times. So being able to code anywhere, with all my state preserved, would be terrific. It's not so much about setting up the development environment (although that is actually pretty annoying for me this week, with the 4 Macs I regularly use all being upgraded to 10.10). It's about being able to just drop what you are doing RIGHT NOW and leave that window open with the half-written line of code, not even compiling much less something you want to check in, and then picking it up again right from that spot, when you are physically somewhere else. That's the dream anyway. The reality is that I just mostly code less these days, and do more of other things (like writing) which are actually totally portable using current technology. But I would like it if someday my dev tools could keep all my developer state in the cloud, and yet have UX as good as the leading native IDEs. We aren't there yet, though. [1]: Haven't tried them all, of course, but I feel like I've tried enough to extrapolate about the where the state of the art currently is.

by q3k 12y ago

hanief 12y ago

I use Sublime Text 3 + GOSublime on my Mac and it has been a nice experience for developing golang apps. But I can see the appeal of web based IDE when combined with tools like nitrous.io, where your development tools are all in the cloud and you don't have to setup everything local just to start coding.

thejosh 12y ago
How do you find debugging? Debugging was one of the primary reasons of moving away from Sublime3 for me, though I didn't try Sublime with Go.
- hanief 12y ago
  Debugging is not ST's strong point for sure, but you can use https://github.com/quarnster/SublimeGDB https://github.com/quarnster/SublimeGDB.
- kyrra 12y ago
  From what I've seen, debuggers are a last-resort for most Go devs. GDB sorta works but it's not a great experience. The Go team is working on ogle[0], but it's a very early prototype at this point so who knows what they intend with it. Most Go devs use logging/printing to debug. Mainly because of the prolific use of Goroutines, properly debugging an app can be very difficult. [0] https://code.google.com/p/ogle/ https://code.google.com/p/ogle/
laumars 12y ago
Sublime 3 + GoSublime is my correct set up as well, and as nice as it is, I do still miss some features from LiteIDE - namely the class view (which is handy for larger projects). Sadly this feature seems to be broken (empty box; doesn't populate with any classes) on my ArchLinux box and after hours of trial and error trying to fix the damn thing, it still doesn't populate. :( Actually, if anyone else has any experience here I'd gratefully welcome it.

pjmlp 12y ago

I also don't get the point.

BruceM 12y ago
Btw, I sent you an email on a somewhat related topic recently.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  I saw it, just had a very busy week. I reply to it still today.

shurcooL 12y ago

One advantage would be that any improvements to the web IDE would directly benefit all its users. On the other hand, improvements you make to your personal local dev environment are local and not helpful to others. Consider the time it took you, when learning Go, to setup gofmt on save, then after some time you might discover goimports and start using that. A newbie coming into Go will not have the benefit of goimports-on-save the way you do. However, if they use the same web IDE, they will have the same good initial experience as you. Just answering the question directly... That is one advantage. (Also, lots of people are using an outdated version of goimports with bugs that have been fixed upstream; this should be a lesser problem with a web IDE.)

pjmlp 12y ago
One of the great features IDEs have over plain text editors is integrated debugging experience. How do you have that in a Web IDE? Specially taking into account all the use cases a programming language is used for.
stephenr 12y ago
I don't use Go so I don't know the specifics of the tools you mentioned but any desktop IDE targeted at or supporting Go would very likely a) support stuff like syntax formatting out of the box and b) have a plugin system for less-common functionality and c) still allow you to define your own custom commands to call external tools/scripts.

andrewchambers 12y ago

Sometimes I'd like to host my IDE online so i can just pick up my work from anywhere, then run my tests from anywhere. Maybe thats one advantage.

hobo_mark 12y ago

For me it would be instant, remote collaboration. Unfortunately no web-based IDE offers that, as far as I know. Google docs for code anyone?

tokenizerrr 12y ago
https://www.nitrous.io/ https://www.nitrous.io/ does something like that, they're not open source or free however (though they do have a free plan).
xyclos 12y ago
Cloud9 offers that. https://c9.io/ https://c9.io/
jasongrout 12y ago
SageMathCloud (https://cloud.sagemath.com https://cloud.sagemath.com) offers collaborative editing of files, IPython and Sage notebooks, and latex documents, and terminal sessions. Really, it's like a collaborative unix account. It doesn't have a debugger, etc., so it's definitely not a full-blown ide, but it does have syntax highlighting and a shell.

flohofwoe 12y ago

Main point to me would be that it would work automatically on every platform and without needing setup/installation/updating, so I could switch between a Chromebook, a Mac, PC with Windows or Linux without even having to think about whether the IDE has been ported to that platform. If there would be a practical IDE solution running in the browser (or Chromium as offline package) for C++ which replaces VStudio/Xcode/QtCreator I would switch in an instant.

niutech 12y ago
There are some decent C++ web IDEs, like https://www.codebox.io/stack/c https://www.codebox.io/stack/c or https://koding.com https://koding.com But what is the purpose of creating yet another Web IDE (for Go) if there are already many established open source solutions like Eclipse Orion? They could just add a Go code completion and a build service to it.

giancarlostoro 12y ago

As someone who wants to see more projects like this one I'll just explain what I see. Instead of opening up a full blown IDE UI 10 times, you could easily open up 10 browser tabs each separated by a web server instance. You can leave your project from one computer, go to the next one and continue. Instead of sending a friend a paste-bin to help you, you could easily link them to where you're working at, and what you're stuck with. No need to SSH or connect directly to a server, when you can indirectly edit files. I see such a tool being useful for PHP / Web admins, provided said tool is setup secure (and hidden very well as a security fall back). Sort of the same way PHPMyAdmin is used, minus the PHP back-end. There's plenty of benefits to web based desktop applications, install once, run from everywhere, including devices that cannot possibly run an IDE but can run a browser, like computers with terrible processing / ram speeds, or tablets.

stephenr 12y ago
Multiple desktop IDEs/editors have true collaborative editing, where both parties can interact at the same time (ie two, user specific cursors) As for the "edit files via ssh". Just stop. Please. This is why we can't have nice things. Etc. If you want to collaborate that's great, but live editing files on a server via ssh is such a bad idea I can't believe I have to say so in 2014. Think of it like the tech equivalent of "don't let your 6 month old baby drive a bus on an icy road at night after a pub crawl"
- crux 12y ago
  This sort of tone is toxic and anachronistic in the extreme. Please consider the sort of environment you contribute to when you relate to strangers in a public community in this way.
  - stephenr 12y ago
    sorry I don't believe in sugar coating the message. But this is HN so I'm sure people think it's more important to make friends and sing Kumbaya than actually stopping ridiculously bad practices.

jayd16 12y ago

At least you wont hear "it runs on my machine" because it never ran on your machine.

veidr 12y ago

Although I don't think there is any web-based IDE that currently exists[1] that provides a remotely acceptable level of usability (even for web development), I buy into the dream. I would love to code right up until 17:15, then go pick up my kid, have dinner, play with his trains or Duplo blocks, and then at 18:45 when my wife takes the kid in for his bath, be able open my laptop at the dinner table and get right back to the work I was doing, with the same code editors and test cases open, breakpoint on the same line of code, and take advantage of that 23 minutes or so by picking up right where I left off. I used to just have a beefy workstation dialed in at my office, and do all my coding there. When I got in the zone, I'd just stay as long as I wanted. It was having kids that broke that arrangement for me, but I can see how it could be different things for other people. The change is that I now have things I have to (and want to) do, that require me to be certain places at certain times. So being able to code anywhere, with all my state preserved, would be terrific. It's not so much about setting up the development environment (although that is actually pretty annoying for me this week, with the 4 Macs I regularly use all being upgraded to 10.10). It's about being able to just drop what you are doing RIGHT NOW and leave that window open with the half-written line of code, not even compiling much less something you want to check in, and then picking it up again right from that spot, when you are physically somewhere else. That's the dream anyway. The reality is that I just mostly code less these days, and do more of other things (like writing) which are actually totally portable using current technology. But I would like it if someday my dev tools could keep all my developer state in the cloud, and yet have UX as good as the leading native IDEs. We aren't there yet, though. [1]: Haven't tried them all, of course, but I feel like I've tried enough to extrapolate about the where the state of the art currently is.