Web-based IDEs Edge Closer To the Mainstream 244
snitch writes "Last week Mozilla released Bespin, their web-based framework for code editing, and only a few days later Boris Bokowski and Simon Kaegi implemented an Eclipse-based Bespin server using headless Eclipse plug-ins. With the presentation of the web-based Eclipse workbench at EclipseCon and the release of products like Heroku, a web-based IDE and hosting environment for RoR apps, it seems that web-based IDEs might soon become mainstream."
Potential for Netbooks (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not too keen on someone else's server being the host for my web based IDE and holding my code but if they could make it so you could attach to any server (including one from your home) I would be all over this.
I know it sounds like I'm just coming full circle and mimicking mainframes from the 80s with the ability to cool and keep a quad core beast at home with a terabyte of storage mirrored across two drives while keeping a nice cool easy to move netbook
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm wondering how they would word their EULA. If they claim ownership of the code that's compiled and developed on their servers, that would be a deal breaker for most developers.
Otherwise its a wonderfully implemented idea.
Re:Web-based Visual Studio for MFC (Score:5, Interesting)
I do believe you've been had. His comment about Win32 strikes me as the intended 'tell' for his sarcasm. The point being that developing desktop applications in a web-based IDE doesn't make much sense. Which I do agree with. The two environments are not at all integrated.
Of course, the AC conveniently ignores the massive business of web development which *could* benefit from centralized IDE services.
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
For precisely this reason, I would never ever switch to a remote IDE hosted by another company.
A possibly debatable secondary reason is just that I don't want anyone else having access to my code that is potentially going to be released as closed source. Everyone knows IT guys are generally snoopy when they're bored, and sometimes my comments contain profanities directed towards my users.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is rather off-topic, but Sumo-Paint [www.sumo.fi] still impresses me, it's not quite as good as Photoshop, etc, but it comes very close...
If Bespin, etc can get anywhere near that functionality/power... it will certainly be useful. Especially in classroom situations, where it can be sandboxed in the browser.
However, I am curious about how one would go about compiling, or is it strictly code-editing, online-only apps?
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a Sage [sagemath.org] developer, and our only GUI is a web interface. Run Sage on your local machine, and you serve to localhost. As Sage developers use the GUI, we're getting more attached to it, and we keep adding more IDE-like features. Recently, there have been discussions to make it easier to edit Sage directly from the GUI. With a little care and extra work, it seems as though we'll be able to make the system such that multiple developers can collaboratively edit the source, making messy merges a thing of the past.
I won't claim that Sage will become a great IDE -- that's not our plan: we want to make great math software. But, the way that people write software is changing. Local editing tools are the best right now because they've had the most time to develop, and today's developers have grown with them. In 10 years? I'm not sure that the younger generation of developers is going to stick with a local copy of emacs. More and more tools are migrating to the web; I don't care to predict that the world isn't going to change.
Re:I doubt it (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever used the google apps? They are actually very quick and responsive, and work in a similar way.
Just my anecdotal experience, but I spend most of my day in Google Docs spreadsheets that I think it is fair to call small (8 columns by somwhere between 20 and 100 rows). At any given time, there are zero to 3 people collaborating on the same document as me. It is slow as shit. I just sorted a 25 row column (just a simple A to Z sort), there was almost 5 seconds in between choosing the GUI function and seeing the result. It even lags when typing in a cell sometimes. I couldn't imagine doing development work in such an environment.
Re:WTF is it with undescribed acronyms? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does "Web-based Integrated Drive Electronics" make sense?
No, which is why I investigated further. Had they spelled it out I would have known that it held no interest to me.
I'm a coffee addict and it's early; my old brain needs to warm up before it functions properly.
We also threw glowing discs at the MCP right up until management put a stop to our shenanigans
Coincidentally I just watched TRON two days ago. It's still a good movie, and somehow even after almost thirty years it's still not outdated.
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
Measures to cut costs as you suggested, this being outsourcing of non-essential business or using third party solutions usually do not work unless they are done with brains and as that pretty much never happens they do not provide real savings. Spreadshit boys have their field day: once when they get bonuses for saving plan and another time when they have to fix what they messed up while doing it. As long as products still work all is well of course.
Do not misunderstand me - I am not against such measures but I find it funny how it usually is done. besides I am cleaning the mess at the end so I do not complain that it is created in the first place of course. OC a day may come when they work out a new saving plan in which they ship the shit directly after it compiles and then bring me with other unfortunates to the big hall where the spreadshit boys give us a sack. Well I would not work for such company anyways so it is not a big deal.
When I think of saving plans, new great ideas and silver bullets, whatever the current hot word is, I always think about 3. paragraph of java's license agreement and why it applies to most of the software that has ever been written.
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
This has been my experience as well. At my former company, we had our own somewhat expensive IT and support crew but everything worked really well. Someone decided to save money by switching to Unisys for help desk support.
Direct support costs went down, but whatever they saved on IT staff we lost 100 times over on lost productivity from help desk tickets being 'resolved' before actual issues and it was a aweful. I have since left the company, but up to the day I left management was still happy using Unisys, which is bizarrely illogical given the higher costs and reduced productivity.
C'est la vie I suppose. Still irks me though how much upper managers get paid for such poor ideas.