24 Jan 2022
Online IDE
Sahil Kokamkar
Table of content
Online IDE solves the process involve in getting started with a specific programming language and running it with some additional features such as code collaboration. It runs code right through the browser, either on the cloud or on the browser itself through web assembly, and doesn't depend on which OS you use.
There are lots of Online IDE out there with lots of different functionalities and targeting specific development, I will be only going through some specific once's as there are lots of online IDE out there.
AWS Cloud9
Cloud 9 is an online IDE offer by AWS which runs on AWS EC2 instance. It offers a good integration with AWS services right from the IDE. It's free to use, but you go get charged on your usage of EC2 instance and other resources to run your code.
You try the free Cloud9 IDE offer by CS50.
CodeSandbox
CodeSandBox is focused on web development with a VScode like UI, and it has integrated support to deploy code directly to Vercel, Netlify and GitHub Pages.
CodeSandBox also supports server side framework such as Remix and MarkoJS.
Google Colab
Google Colab is not a full-fledged IDE but rather Jupiter Notebook hosted by google on cloud with the support of GPUs and TPUs to run on a browser.
It is used to run have workload which cannot be done on low level hardware, such as analysing and visualizing huge chunks of data and training a machine-learning model.
It is mainly used by Data Scientist or an AI Researcher, though it doesn't support R or Scala.
Replit
Replit is the IDE which support almost all programming language along with running GUIs whether it's ImGUI or Tkinter it supports it.
Along with that, it now also supports Nix.
It is by far the IDE which offer support for most programming languages.
Overleaf
Overleaf is an online LaTeX Editor it not an IDE in the sense but offer a lot more features than normal editor for LaTeX, and it runs on browser.
Some IDEs which are similar but worth mentioning
- codepen - Not really an IDE, but a code sharing platform for front-end developers.
- StackBlitz - Similar to codesandox but uses WebContainers and the first WebAssembly-based operating system which boots entire development environments in milliseconds.
- goorm - Online container focused IDE.
- JSFiddle - Simple IDE with support of making AJAX calls.
- github.dev - Just hit the
.Key on any GitHub Repo, it will open up in VSCode like IDE in browser. - gitpod - Online IDE with support of JetBrain IDEs and ssh.
For me at the end, nothing beats the feel of using EMAC locally.