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Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

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221–230 of 254 posts

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#221
post #207
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's clear to everybody here that you can integrate any type of functionality into emacs. But if most new programmers prefer browsers, then that's what they are going to use... Maybe they just prefer building tools on top of javascript/css (where they can create actual GUIs) rather than lisp. For most programmers this is kind of a moot discussion because usually you don't get to choose the tools yourself and…

> But if most new programmers prefer browsers, then that's what they are going to use... If most new programmers prefer to edit code in browsers than in editors, then they are just wrong. I don't know why the preferences of new programmers should matter to professionals any more than the preferences of peewee football players matter to the NFL. The whole point of education is to improve people, not leave them satisfi…

> Anyone who prefers JavaScript to Lisp or SmallTalk is just wrong.

I also happen to share that opinion, but the trick is to avoid falling into the Smug Lisp Weenie trap.

It is amazing how primitive most editors are in comparison to Emacs. However, what is also amazing is how fast they are progressing. I've been trying (of all things!) Atom, and it is already adequate for most folks.

Just the other day I've overhead colleagues talking about how some editor (MS Code?) finally added tabs. I kept to myself, but couldn't help rolling my eyes. Not only buffers are more practical (specially if paired with something like Helm), one could hack their own tab bar in a reasonable amount of time (or just download something to do so).

Recent editors are just not customizable enough (not yet, at least). Doesn't matter if they are written in Lisp or BrainF*ck.

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#222
post #159
post #52

Developers are quite conservative of their environment, but a cloud IDE could be awesome. I want to write code on a 2 lb MacBook, with continuous build-as-you-type in the cloud on a fleet of Xeons that have larger CPU caches than my entire project. Have 5, 50, 500 tests that need to run? Run them all in parallel continuously and get immediate red/green feedback in your IDE. Behind the scenes Lambda takes horizontal s…

This is a great idea. It makes much more sense to run your tests in the cloud than on your local machine. I don't think it can be done 'as-you-type' due to resource constraints. But I do think it can be done pre-commit. As a programmer I'm waiting for my tests to finish for hours per day, leading to a lot of inefficient multitasking and distractions. Obligatory adapted XKCD http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/381622/…

> I don't think it can be done 'as-you-type' due to resource constraints. But I do think it can be done pre-commit.

When you rent a Google Compute Engine machine, it doesn't matter how much you use the CPU, the monthly cost is the same (roughly $30/vCPU/month). So you incur no additional cost by restarting tests after each input character. And if we can spread multiple users' tests out over multiple machine instances, the cost would remain constant per user, but their tests would execute in parallel on multiple instances.

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#223
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failing to understand that different people have different preferences isn't a terribly interesting stance to take in public. These sort of sentiments are better worded as a search for knowledge, instead of this sneer.

You are the one sneering. "Failing to understand" is a completely respectful stance. It places the lack of understanding on the person saying it. It leaves open the possibility that the person saying it is wrong. It's skeptical but not without a degree of humility. This is opposed to a straight up judgement, like what you have just done.

[deleted]

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#224
post #171

I really hope that the Cloud9 service keeps running, and maintains the free version that it currently provides. I have been using Cloud9 with the Michael Hartl Rails Tutorial to teach new programmers the basics of programming with Ruby and Rails and it has greatly reduced the friction for them to start learning. In previous classes we had the students setup a Ruby and Rails environment on their own systems and not on…

Cloud9 has been a great partner to the Rails Tutorial, with their custom Rails Tutorial workspace allowing readers to spin up quickly at the beginning, while also maintaining state if they need to take a break. It's also enormously less overhead that downloading and installing a virtual machine. There's no telling what this acquisition will bring, of course, but it's a good fit for AWS, so I'm optimistic that the ser…

I just wanted to thank you for making the Rails Tutorial. It was incredibly useful for learning Rails!

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#225
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do! —GitLab user

Thanks, good to hear you like it. But this is quite an involved project. So we want to do Automatic parallelization of tests first https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3819 And it will need a client integrations and a way to make this 'hidden' repository and/or commit.

I agree this is very / more valuable, for my use case at least. The discussion around creating the build file is interesting.

In Django for instance, it would be straightforward to automate generating the list of apps to test:

    {
      "name": "my django project",
      "tasks": [
        "python manage.py test myapp1",
        "python manage.py test myapp2",
        "python manage.py test myapp3",
      ],
      "labels":"..."
    }
Those app names can be pulled from Django's settings.INSTALLED_APPS with a little config to avoid testing third party apps.

It would be cool if the architecture allows for plugins like this.

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#226
post #105

I've discovered C9 while viewing coders working via Livecoding.tv. It's highly interesting how very young developers are using C9, naturally, to code. Something great is happening behind this behavior, it's much more than an online IDE. It feels friction less to develop a website totally online for this kind of developers. Also, for example, I can think many people using PC's on cybercafes prefering C9 to develop. I…

I fail to see how it's advantageous over just having a shell account somewhere free like SDF though. Do young developers just want to interact with everything through the browser?

A browser is much easier to use. Every computer has a browser and no place blocks said browser. This means that when you're not near your dev machine, you can easily use another machine to log on, regardless of what software it has and which ports are open. As a bonus, you get a fullblown IDE with all your serverside dev tools (Node or Rails etc) ready to go, without any configuration or installation of packages.

For a concrete use case: my dev laptop broke down in the midst of a project, and I could just use a generalpurpose computer at location, use c9 to spin up a server, clone the git repo and I had an IDE to go with. Did not need to wait for the sysadmin to let me access a terminal or to unblock certain ports. No loss of productivity whatsoever, I was up and running in minutes.

Also, I can give others access to said c9 workspace, and they don't need to know anything besides the programming language used, to make little tweaks.

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good quality ingredients is the most important part, some chefs would say. You're right, but all you'd have to do is build an opinionated "skin" over Emacs, bringing together and properly configuring existing plugins, writing some new ones, and packaging it nicely. I recently started using Spacemacs[1], and I'm basically sold on Emacs as an IDE-building toolkit. And I say that as a decades-long Vim user (I still use…

> ... > You're right, but all you'd have to do is build cloud9 yourself. > I recently.. There, I fixed it for you. Now why would anyone want to reinvent the wheel again?

Eh.. what? Cloud9 is the reinvention of the wheel. That's the point you missed. With far fewer features, it just happens to be packaged together nicely to suit a particular purpose.

Cloud 9 is one of many. In 3 years you won't remember the name.

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a hair under $5 a month, but unless you have a reason to deal with AWS complexity, you're probably better off with something like Digitalocean or Vultr for the same price and less surprises.

Just a hair under $5 a month IF you run it continuously. hyperdeficit was talking about using VMs for teaching, where VMs would presumably be spun up and down as needed.

Which you can also do at Digital Ocean (note: you have to take a snapshot, and destroy the droplet in order to suspend billing).

While it might be pennies (or less!) - I'm still wary of how Amazon bills everything separately - your data at rest, your CPU, your bandwidth. I don't know if Digital Ocean would be any cheaper - but it sure strikes me as being a lot easier to predict. Maybe I'm just unreasonably afraid of what I perceive as "billing complexity" at Amazon.

Now I'm actually tempted to set up a small classroom using skolelinux/DebianEdu[1] on Digital Ocean built around a central droplet running the servers - and seeing how easy it is to suspend every thing to a dormant state and revive it... mostly just to play with the ldap-stuff.

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Insta...

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#229
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how it's advantageous over just having a shell account somewhere free like SDF though. Do young developers just want to interact with everything through the browser?

A browser is much easier to use. Every computer has a browser and no place blocks said browser. This means that when you're not near your dev machine, you can easily use another machine to log on, regardless of what software it has and which ports are open. As a bonus, you get a fullblown IDE with all your serverside dev tools (Node or Rails etc) ready to go, without any configuration or installation of packages. For…

> A browser is much easier to use. Every computer has a browser and no place blocks said browser.

I think I just realized how much lasting trauma the browser wars caused me. You're completely right, but my gut still reflexively respond: I know you have a shiny thing that works great in Internet Explorer, but those ActiveX controls won't run in Opera on Linux...

Rebuilding trust in the web as an application platform is going to take some force on will on my part...

(That said, I have grumpy reservations on the security of our current and future web - but I guess it's not really worse than what it was like when people were running Windows 3.11 and running random code in spreadsheets on a samba-share...)

Re: Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon

#230
Started with Cloud9, moved to Nitrous and ended with a server with vim + tmux on DigitalOcean as my instant-on IDE from everywhere. I find this superior than former ones: cheaper, more powerful, more flexible and somehow faster/more adjustable for my needs. Still Cloud9 and Nitrous were my gateway drugs for cloud coding.
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