Last week I had discussion with one of my office mate who thinks soon we are going to be ditching the local development and moving to the cloud. As much as I like to disagree I don't see a valid reason for the cloud to stop any time soon.
Other than local privacy and keeping the sandbox offline. I don't feel any strong for installing those huge tools and their dependencies.
If we're to use cloud code editors, what are our options these days?
CodePen
This editor supports various JS libraries like - react, vue, and CSS frameworks like tailwind, bootstrap, SASS and few others. So basically if you are experimenting with the view end of the application, then codepen is a good place to test out your stuff. You can also embed your creation in blog or forum where you can use the HTML embeds.
Image Credit: Codepen
I am using the free version for most of the simple hobby projects and testing in CSS. I am pretty much happy with it so far.
Codesandbox
I was trying to find the alternative of the codepend and came across this. And then did most of the initial react project setup from there. This way I have avoided a lot of local development setup till the point of database connectivity.
It has both free and premium offerings and if you do make use of the JS frameworks, then do check out various other framework setups that you can try.
Image Credit:Codesandbox
Oh and did I tell you how quick and easy installing the NPM packages is here? And after the completion of the project you can eject the app from the cloud and take native for testing with database etc. It uses Visual Studio Code server edition on it, Cool isn't it?
Stackblitz
I thought it was kind of codesandbox clone. But it's much more than that. I still do think that this does make use of the visual studio code server edition too, but I am not sure about their backend. I don't need to know either considering, compared to codesandbox, it's lot quicker. Though it also likely to go premium in near future even for free github repos.
Image Credit: Stackblitz
But it's cool to use firebase integration, github support and forking option right in the IDE itself. All in your browser. Love it.
Codeanywhere
A little bit of polished online editor. It's mix of visual studio code but with a lot of other features and the workflow options. It has both free and premium features but I personally think that most of the people wont' be going ahead of the free usage.
Image Credit: Codeanywhere
Github Codespaces and Salesforce Code Builder
There are also premium SAAS offerings that are now integrating the Visual Studio Code server edition in their products. Take example of the Github, it has now created spaces feature for the premium users which can allow them to code within their repository. It looks simple like this.
Image Credit: Github
If you are into salesforce, they also recently lauched code builder which is basically visual studio code server edition contains. And the feature is pretty simple to use considering you don't have to push the local setup after that.
Image Credit: Salesfoce
**Want something for JavaScript only? **
I have been fiddling with JS code for some time now and used the jsfiddle to test out some of the small snippets of projects for online demos. And jsfiddle is pretty handy for that.
What about Online Compilers with Editors built in?
There are plenty of cloud editors which also include compilers that I have not listed here because that would be like long list. But for your curiosity, you can check out rippl too. You will enjoy using such small sandbox for various languages as it's more of compilers than editor.
I may cover online compilers in near future considering online compilers can save you equal amount of time and also you can code lot more effectively because you end up with more errors on local environment. A lot can be said about the online compilers, but let's leave that for some other day.
What do I want out of such IDEs from the cloud?
I am thinking in terms of the hobby project or say even the workplace project workflow. So what do I need? I need git integration, so that I can use gitlab, github or even bitbucket, without having to worry about the merging new changes after testing.
I also think we definitely need ability to eject the functional app so that we can take this app local. And who know we can use it with the docker so as to minimize the work required on server. I wish such IDEs in near future come with serverless or docker support.
Heavy installable dependencies? cough cough Microsoft Visual Studio stack. Yeah they pack a lot of things that you don't even use when they push their stack on the developers. Same with the game development engines etc.
I also think ability to add additional dependencies on such cloud environment can save us a lot of time and the efforts of setting things up. Who knows in near future we can also bundle the dependencies before starting specific project.
I guess there is a long road to walk some of the things that can replace complete local development setup.
I don't think we are there yet.
Thanks for reading till the end. Do let me know your views.