Developers: a new kind of IDE arrives in Cloud9 (First look)

Having an IDE as a "service" is a pretty big leap for me. Paying a monthly fee for this is beyond my current ability to fathom.<p>For $22/month I can get 10 users on a private github - the 2 ios devs can use xcode, the 3 rails guys can use textmate, etc..<p>When you compare this against the more "corporate" stuff - VS or IntelliJ, well...most large corporations aren't ready to store source outside of their firewall, and they have volume licensing anyways.<p>Eh, but I'm generally wrong about this sorta thing anyways...

I actually started using it today, maybe two hours before it got posted on Scobleizer and while I didn't experience any super-fancy code assist features, it is fast, responsive and does not get in the way. Fell in love right away and I am basically not a fan of hosted coding environments like this but as my code is pretty much standalone JS for now it seemed to make perfect sense.<p>Basically I only went there because I had it bookmarked a few days ago and Aptana crashed my box when I tried to create a new file (yeah, I know, that was a wild idea). But now I am kind of glad I did.<p>Too bad it's down right now but if you can't get through and haven't seen it yet, give it a shot some time later.

It appears <a href="http://cloud9ide.com/" rel="nofollow">http://cloud9ide.com/</a> is down and thus the problem with this solution.

How would I use it? I wouldn't. I have my editor in the cloud. I log into my remote server via a terminal and I fire up Vim. ;) There are plenty of people who have tried the editor in the cloud thing, nobody seems to have been able to build anything which has stuck. Meanwhile, Vim and Emacs are still going strong and perhaps the best editors available. It would be tough to create something which could provide an alternative to something so versatile and has had years of community add-ons and improvements being made.

I followed the roots of this with interest, back when it was called Bespin, then SkyWriter. The idea is compelling: most web developers just need a highlighting-capable text editor with online connectivity. Many of us work directly on staging servers, so in theory if there was a capable web-based editor around, you could work from pretty much any computer without having to install something. You could log into your web-based editor and all your bookmarks, SSH certs, everything would be there.<p>Now, Cloud9 is - from what I understand - the commercial version of this concept. Right now, signup seems to be broken, but I'm curious how it turned out.

Having worked at what was probably the first company to build an IDE in the browser (Bungee Labs) that subsequently crashed and burned, I wish them luck with it. I think you can be successful, but you have to VERY carefully target your customers (and if you think "every" developer is interested, you might as well hand the investors their money back and go home now).

I believe this is based on what used to be called Mozilla Bespin. Interesting project to be sure. I'm skeptical overall though.

I watched for a few seconds, then jumped a few seconds later, and then closed the window.<p>A few reactions:<p>- show me, not tell me. lots of blah blah<p>- i still hate "building 43" as a name. it's a strange reference to a part of another company; is rackspace SO limp that they have no corporate culture whatsoever?

I would be very wary. You are trusting the "cloud" even for access to work on your code let alone store and secure it. I just don't think it's there yet. Maybe I'm just old school but I like having a copy of my code where I know it's safe and secure and where I can get to it on a moments notice if needed.

I really like these ideas, and I'd love to see one of them go. I did notice the demo url was 127.0.0.1 though... I know, it's just a demo..<p>That said, one question.. Do you guys work 100% in your own IDE? And hosted (not localhost)? I think that's a must if you want other shops to use it.<p>Also I think a zero-barrier demo on your site would be huge. I ought to be able to click a link, land in an editor, and write some running code, a-la the mongodb shell on their site.

Hmm... now maybe I can use my Cr48 for something...

This seems awesome! Is there a way to connect this to a server via SSH or something? So that you can work on your development server from everywhere.