Cloud computing is taking over traditional computing. Almost everything is ported to the cloud. But what about the Cloud IDE, are we ready to switch yet?.
Journey
Few years back I bought a Chromebook. My expectations from Chromebook were high. Just because it is Google backed(The Chrome OS) and also I personally think that future general computing will be replaced by cloud computing. Microsoft is going to launch the Windows X. Apple has launched the Apple Silicon, which is basically an ARM chip. These things are more Web inclined technologies and they are basically going to use more cloud based applications rather than traditional applications. From streaming to gaming, everything is moving towards the cloud ecosystem.
Cloud IDE
Because of the Chromebook I started my journey to find good Cloud IDE and I tried many of them. I wasted lots of my time and money on this as well. Result might be surprising.
Docker and Kubernetes have opened many doors in the technology industry. Just a decade ago these all were fantasies for a developer. Now due to containers our work has drastically optimized. Similarly, if we containerize our entire Development Environment and host it somewhere. It will become a Cloud IDE.
There are many of them already wandering around the Web. Some of the coolest being Codeanywhere, Goorm, Koding(Self Hosted). And then there is another option of using Google Cloud, Amazon AWS or any other hosting service for hosting your own IDE. But that’s a lot of work.
- Codeanywhere is good but it’s costly and it’s not that snappy. If you are coding on a regular machine and then you suddenly switch to Codeanywhere. You will feel that lack of performance. Even the paid plan is not that great. Although I tried the “Starter” one. But it failed to deliver the performance.
- Goorm is the fastest one. I personally liked it way too much in the beginning. I even moved my entire working environment to Goorm. But, what happens is, sometimes their servers are out of reach. And sometimes in your containers you won’t be able to perform simple tasks. It will use all your system resources and finally it will fail.
- Koding is a self hosted application. It is open source and everything open source is best. But it’s no different than hosting your own local Development Environment. I would like you to try it though.
- The best alternative solution if you are already having hosting services is to host your own Development Environment.
- And if you are having Google Cloud then you can go for Cloud Code. Or else if you’re having Amazon AWS then you can go for Cloud9.
- There is one more open source option that I am currently using that is hosting code-server on your own server. If you want to save money and get the best performance possible with least amount of work. Then this one is going to be the best solution.
Conclusion
In Simple words, we are not ready yet. The current state of all commercial IDE is the trash. They all fail at something or some point. You can experiment with them but you can’t just rely on them. The only reliable solution is to host your preferred IDE on your own server. If you are a VS Code or Vim user then there are easy port overs. You can try them now. Or even better you can just use your additional computer or Raspberry Pi(Any single board computer) to host IDE and start experimenting today.