HACKER Q&A
📣 saga81

Do you use browser-based IDEs? Why? Why Not?


I've heard strong opinions from either side so I'm curious about what are some of the reasons you DO or you DO NOT use browser-based IDEs like Github codespaces, replit.com, vscode.dev, stackblitz.com, hony.ai and many more (Please suggest if you use something else). Also, please comment about your programming language and stack if relevant.

A few arguments to get the conversation started

Against using browser-based IDEs:

- Browser-based IDEs are limited in functionality

- Limited Customizability

- ...

For using browser-based IDEs:

- Security, e.g. installing npm dependencies on your local machine vs a sandboxed remote server

- Convenience of having the same environment everywhere

- ...

  👤 stephenr Accepted Answer ✓
A browser based IDE can't compare with a full IDE like e.g the IntelliJ-based IDEs from JetBrains, in terms of features. At best you'd get browser based access to a rich IDE running remotely... which is kind of the whole point of Fleet, but without (a) needing to run in a browser or (b) being tied to a specific website/service.

I'm not sure if you're trying to suggest "convenience" or "security" are points in favour of running something remotely or not?

Personally, the vast majority of projects I work on, use a Vagrant box in some way, so I get reproducible, "sandbox" environments without the need for internet access to make it work.

My work is a bit of a mixed bag, including (but not necessarily limited to) the following (in no particular order):

- PHP library development;

- PHP web app development;

- Shell library development;

- Infrastructure tooling development;

- Dev tooling development;

- Vagrant box development (i.e. creating base boxes to use in projects)

👤 eimrine
I don't like such IDEs which are just thin clients to some megacorp's computer.