IDE’s come from a time in which the majority of what we programmed were monolithic desktop applications.
But that’s not the reality anymore for many of us.
As web developers we now work on distributed systems consisting of many different microservices.
Let me give you an example: Not long ago we were all happy to listen to our music with Windows Media Player, a nice and simple desktop application that could probably build and run in any C-IDE without many problems.
Today many people use Spotify or similar streaming services to not only listen to music but also share and interact with the artists.
I don’t even want to imagine the hassle of setting up a development version of such a big software system.
A typical workflow of mine
Here is an example of the Codesphere co-founder Jonas. It is about setting up a new project from one of his friend. Spoiler: It’s not a great experience.
Because I recently got a new development machine I set up my keymap, installed a couple plugins, pulled out my split keyboard and I was able to do my code changes at a reasonable speed (ignoring the occasional wrong import suggestion I always seem to get).
Now the time comes to test my changes.
I begin with installing the project dependencies and at this point my hands begin to sweat as the CPU fan of my modern 2k€ laptop begins to spin at its maximum rate.
The IDE has started indexing a couple million of files and is burning away my battery at light speed. After a couple of minutes my computer becomes responsive again and I try to start the build and run script. But it’s not working!
It looks like some of the linux commands from my colleague don’t work on my windows computer. Also, I accidentally change the line endings from LF to CRLF on the files I modified, which will probably cause a headache later on when I try to deploy this to the production linux infrastructure.
Finally I get some of the microservices I want to test running. They are complaining about wrong credentials and about being blocked by the Azure firewall.
So I whitelist my daily changing IP address and gather the development secrets from the companies file share.
Even now: one of the services is still not fully healthy.
I ask my friend for help… He tells me that that particular service manages cluster resources and can only be run in a kubernetes environment and that I would have to install it if I wanted to debug that.
At this point my morning is over and I leave the desk to get a second coffee and ask myself:
‘Integration’ is a significant part of I(ntegrated) D(evelopment) E(nvironments) — so why are IDEs disconnected from our workflows today?
Let’s fix this
As web developers we always try to port as many desktop apps as possible to the browser.
After all, the browser seems to have solved the problem of software distribution allowing users to work at any place and any time.
Anywhere: Imagine being able to code anywhere, even on your Android tablet without having your lap burned from the CPU quickly burning away your battery.
Anytime: New collaborators could simply click a link and start coding right away. No individual setup process for the specific hardware.
There are more advantages to think of like real-time collaboration, having your settings synced everywhere and simplifying the integration of cloud services just to name a few.
At Codesphere we make this vision a reality.
Do you know the limitations and painpoints Jonas is describing in his article? Let us know! If you enjoyed reading this article, feel free to share it and follow us!
Oldest comments (80)
Cross-platform issues sound so familiar. 😂
Cloud IDEs/editors sound like the solution ... your whole dev setup in the cloud, and you use just a browser to access it - like your laptop is now just a dumb console, as in the good ol' mainframe days - no need for an expensive or powerful desktop or laptop anymore ... Apple and Microsoft won't like it :-)
Yeah, you are right! Coding in the cloud and adding intelligence between IDE and cloud services is the future. I am working on exactly that with Codesphere. Have you signed up for Codesphere? Would be great to see you there and have your feedback.
I checked your website, very nice, but it's a bit light on details - for instance:
what languages will you support - is it all Javascript based or will you support, for example, PHP
how flexible will it be - will it be open and extendable, will there be a Linux terminal, Docker ... will it be possible to install "anything" or will it be more like a walled garden concept?
how is this different from e.g. GitHub Codespaces?
More questions than answers, is there more information you can point me at?
Tell me one person who actually enjoys developing on an old PC other than because of nostalgia. None. Cloud IDEs may seem a solution for a novice user who doesn't want or doesn't know how to install a proper IDE. Even these JAVA-based IDEs (i.e: Jetbrains' ones) are way better performant than browser-based IDEs. Not an Universal solution.
Not yet a universal solution ... I can see the potential advantages, but this still needs maturing, I don't see myself tossing my powerful workstation out of the window anytime soon. But who knows, never say never, I think this will take time.
It will start with smaller projects and especially with new projects. But sooner or later the arguments for the cloud are just too compelling.
Spot on ... people won't start out by putting their mission critical stuff in the cloud - they will first try it out with smaller projects, then when they gain confidence they'll commit to it for their bigger projects ... step by step.
Fully agree.
Generally I would not disagree to certain parts of your comment. But a) a proper IDE can be cloud-based - why not? And b) this is all not about the IDE only. Having IDE and cloud services connected boosts the productivity of every developer as it leverages the full scale of technology and computing power at any time.
Personally, I much prefer running on my local file system
Sure. Anyone should be able to decide and there will be more and more advantages of a non-local set up.
This. As much as a cloud based IDE solves problems, it introduces ones.
Your application was architected poorly (the story above) and your experience will suck.
But here I sit, on two good development machines. They can handle a good workload. I don't want browser funkiness to interfere with development. Stackblitz for example is fine for a quick POC, so is JS Fiddle.
But to me, neither is as good as a daily driver as VS.
I've been using JetBrains for years and just tried VS Code in cloud, don't see any problems so far. It feels much better honestly, without those endless indexations and other problems.
What about the privacy? I don’t think companies would like to share it’s source code.
Very good question. Source code must stay secure and that's the case in the pods. But there for sure will be limitations for some companies.
Most people already store their code in the cloud (Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket) ... there's not anything new here really.
Right you are! Only very few companies with super sensitive data might have limitations (maybe even only by law) to stay away from the cloud...
Security is always an important topic, especially with IaaS.
Not only can the code get compromised but also your secret keys, customer data, etc..
Encryption everywhere seems to the solution to me.
In practice that means using TLS for network traffic, and various tools to encrypt passwords, code and user data.
You can do static code analysis to prevent data leaks during runtime.
To be honest, those are all good practices even if you work with an inhouse datacenter.
But I know that it can be a hazzle setting all this up yourself, especially the TLS certificates.
Codesphere will manage all of that for you out of the box when you stick to certain conventions.
In IDE performance, sometimes, means a lot and there's no way that a javascript application is more reliable and efficient than a C++/C desktop app
I share your appreciation of performance and reliability.
Computation heavy task like compiling, code-analysis, and search indexing have to be done with a compiled language.
But that's nothing speaking against cloud IDEs.
Moving this computation to the cloud can even be an advantage because you can share dependencies and build artefacts between contributors and just work stronger computers in general.
For the frontend however, an IDE is just a fancy text editor.
I don't see why that particular part couldn't run in the browser.
The major web IDEs (VScode, Atom, WebStorm) are doing that already, running on either Node or Java VMs.
Well, until you realize that VSCode is a Javascript app (packaged with Electron) ... it isn't that much more than a browser app really, and look how performant it is, it's more than adequate for the great majority of development tasks.
Then when using an online or cloud version of it (with Github Codespaces or equivalent) you'd be completely in the cloud with a browser based IDE. I believe this will be completely feasible, and even enjoyable, in the near future.
Browsers and Javascript engines get ever more performant, even more so when throwing WebAssembly in the mix.
(oh, and apart from VSCode, other mainstream IDEs like Eclipse or Jetbrains aren't even coded in C/C++, they're developed in Java)
Closes eyes and pinches bridge of nose.
You do realize that the Javascript engine in question is written in C++ running natively on the local machine, right? This is no more a "glorified browser app" than Python is. It's an interpreted language, not a website. Javascript just happens to be the language being interpreted.
And yes, I'm aware that Electron is using HTML and CSS for its styling. Once again — files being interpreted. There are other non-Electron, non-JS GUI toolkits that leverage CSS.
Most of the issues with web browser performance has a lot to do with the web browser itself, and with the particular Javascript engine, not the webkit per se. So this is really an apples-and-oranges type issue.
Electron packs a browser which is not much different to your local chrome + it runs a node process.
With a cloud IDE, you can run expensive tasks on many servers.
That said, Codesphere's goal is not to replace your IDE, its meant to replace your cloud provider.
We aim to do this in the long run with lower prices, more automation, more privacy and no setup.
The UI is an IDE because..uhm..yeah we liked the idea :)
Yes, that Javascript engine is probably written in C/C++, but what's your point then? If you run VSCode on your local machine, then you're effectively running an editor or lightweight IDE in the browser ... and if you'd use a cloud based IDE then you're also running an editor/IDE in the browser ... same, or not?
Uhm....server round trip time? Unless it loads entirely locally, and then you have the initial download time more or less each time.
Network changes everything.
Well yes okay, the cloud development idea as such assumes that your connection is fast enough, otherwise the whole concept falls flat, so that's a big "if" ... downloading the source code would be one time and then being cached, I suppose.
Except it isn't just the source going over network. It's the data, the response times for operations, etc.
And it isn't just a matter of if your net is fast enough to WORK. It becomes a limiting factor in most cases: the responsiveness of many operations will be limited by network speed, not just local storage IO speed.
Ergo "this is apples to oranges".
Yeah maybe, there's a lot to be said about all this, but this wasn't the original comment of this thread ... :-)
The original comment said that the performance of a desktop application developed in C/C++ would always be superior over a browser based application. To which I responded that VSCode is in fact a browser/JS based app (and some other IDEs are developed in Java rather than C/C++).
So we're having a different discussion now than the original one.
At Codesphere you can get an early access and a free VM when you sign up on the website! ❤️
Some good points here. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
Thank you!
We are leagues away from the level of customization that desktop editors offers : I have dozens of Atom packages and full custom config files. I don't see that happening to a cloud based editors anytime soon.
And cloud editors are slooooowwwww… I'd love to love glitch, codesandbox etc. but when you start opening more than a couple files, performances melt. Maybe yours is different… maybe not :p
Now that your dev environment runs in the cloud is another story, especially when you have a big app. An excellent article on subject can be found here :
Why Eventbrite runs a 700 node Kube cluster just for development
Ethan J. Jackson ・ Aug 27 '20 ・ 6 min read
We are already way faster than glitch, gitpod, and codesandbox (lol), mainly because we designed specifically for a cloud env. Codesphere will hardly run on your desktop (though you can mount a fs and use your local IDE's).
It is not meant to replace your local environment but we aim to extend it with a cloud provider which is REALLY build for developers and the UI is a dedicated IDE which you might not have to leave.
This was just a personal experience and there are definitly ways to work efficiently on desktops.
For example, I remember having a good time with Java and IntelliJ.
But once I switched through a couple of projects with ~10 microservices and cutting edge technology it took me a long time to set everything up again and again.
Most of the team just settled for a mediocre workflow instead of doing the work of maximizing the benefit from every feature or tool available.
We would have been happy to be able to just click a link and start coding with all the available features.
Addressing your other concerns:
First of all, I think that the
node.jsdependency and indexing problem is a totally different discussion. I will comment instead on the debugging and managing microservices problem.Reading some of the comments and being familiar with the problem (corporate secret: blame the frontend guy if they can't run your super-duper microservice cluster locally!) I think the problem is that AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and the rest don't provide integrated solutions. So either they create an end-to-end solution with the IDE shipped or it won't happen. But there are privacy, security and vendor lock-in concerns.
There are still people in 2021 who think you should handcraft every
.yamlfile for yourkubernetescluster - because "control". People still want an editor that is not provided by big, evil corporation and expect that it will magically work with big, evil corporation's infrastructure. And everyone is figuring out their very own custom solution for managing services, testing them and hoping they can roll back if shit hits the fan.So I think step number one is not an IDE, but standardizing and completely hiding the variability of the infrastructure. Setup should be as easy as to select with a checkbox if you need a dev, a stage or a production cluster. You press the button and then it creates everything necessary on your local machine to interact with the dev and stage environments. And then the debugging/managing functionality of an IDE will be just pretty UI over existing services. Can't really see without total vendor lock-in.
Thanks for this valuable and educated view. The IDE for us at Codesphere is 'just' a front end. Figuring out all the very own custom solutions plenty of resources and productivity. This is unnecessary in 2021.
Agree, we aim to build exactly what you describe.
With the difference that we build the full workflow first, with these steps:
1: private-project-scale,
2: mvp-scale,
vision: production-scale
It's not a vendor lock in because you can just download all the config and deploy it elsewhere (or change and we deploy it for you).
Think of it as a cloud provider that generates your setup where the UI is an IDE :)
That sounds great! Good luck with that!
Maintaining production replicas is a joyless task that takes too much time away from actual coding.
Thank you, that is the idea :)
Sounds like a problem of trying to use windows as you dev environment. Or you can use docker for you dev environments. I hate cloud IDEs. Every one that I've used has been mediocre and more trouble to work around the trouble of setting up a cloud workspace than it's worth.
Can imagine what you experienced. Which cloud IDE was the worst you tried and why?