
Cloud9 Acquired by Amazon - welder
https://c9.io/blog/great-news/
======
hyperdeficit
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 only did that take multiple sessions to get setup,
but then we were dealing with environment differences that took the focus away
from the basics of learning Ruby nearly every session.

~~~
jozan
Wouldn't virtual machine basically do the same thing? I've taken some classes
where teacher gave us an image where everything was already installed and
configured. Everything went smoothly.

However, Cloud9 is much more convenient since it runs entirely on browser but
VM solution could work in case C9 discontinues its free tier.

~~~
fragsworth
One of these days we'll have fast enough Internet speeds in the U.S. that
remote VMs will work (nicely). We're definitely not there yet.

~~~
sbierwagen
What, you've never sshed into a remote machine?

~~~
beachstartup
i think this thread is separating the beginners from the veterans.

~~~
softawre
I think what the GP was talking about is more like RDP for a development
environment.

~~~
beachstartup
yeah sure, vnc. which works fine over the internet.

it even works fine over ssh, over vpn, over the internet, over 3g, in an
airplane!

it's turtles all the way down.

------
Rezo
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 scaling from minutes/seconds down to milliseconds, so go
radically horizontal.

I want my editor, exactly as I left it, down to the open tabs and cursor
position, on any machine. And pair-programming Google docs simultaneous-edit
style, without either party giving up the ability to run/debug the software on
their own.

What if the FaaS/Lambda lifecycle management was tightly integrated in the
IDE? Working on, testing, versioning and publishing a function could be re-
imagined in a non-file centric way.

~~~
zeveb
> 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.

Your editor doesn't need to run remotely in order to do this; it just needs to
be able to run things remotely in order to do it.

> I want my editor, exactly as I left it, down to the open tabs and cursor
> position, on any machine.

You could build this from syncthing and emacs, if you wanted.

> And pair-programming Google docs simultaneous-edit style, without either
> party giving up the ability to run/debug the software on their own.

You can do this, too, with emacs. It's just a simple matter of programming.

Why spend time reinventing the wheel when there's already a network-aware,
extensible editor with man-centuries (man-millennia?) of extensions already
built?

~~~
Rezo
You're telling me rsync already does everything that I want to do, when I'm
trying to describe Dropbox.

~~~
zeveb
> You're telling me rsync already does everything that I want to do, when I'm
> trying to describe Dropbox.

Alternatively, you're trying to say that a McDonald's Happy Meal™ is great
food, when I'm serving salt-crusted ribeye, served with fresh English peas,
roasted sweet corn and garlic mashed potatoes with cream.

~~~
fogleman
But you're not serving it, you're just selling the ingredients.

~~~
solipsism
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
Vim, just as key bindings within Spacemacs).

[1]
[http://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs](http://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs)

~~~
bastijn
> ...

> 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?

~~~
solipsism
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.

~~~
bastijn
It might be, but so was google. In addition, some of the greatest software is
nothing more than bundling the right components together that existed before.
Microsoft Office is not exactly unique, emacs can do that and was available
well before it (emacs can do everything!). Wordpress is not really innovative,
it's just a collection of things others already had, yet it is huge now. Point
is, Emacs is missing to much to equal cloud9 right now. It might all be
somewhere, but it isn't readily available in a form users of cloud9 would
like.

So reinventing the wheel? If you refer to some magical emacs setup living
somewhere on a fictional users local machine which is being cloned and made
very real and available to the world. Yes they are reinventing the wheel. If
it's easy, please make the fictional emacs become real and share it with us in
a shown HN. I think there is a difference between a hacky approach that works
and a product.

------
petercooper
Once fully integrated with AWS, this could offer a rather exciting, low
friction way to work on the platform. Using Cloud9 to build, test, and deploy
Lambda functions from a single interface with all the auth stuff dealt with
automatically.. you could have some powerful APIs running in the cloud very
quickly.

(Maybe there's even a play for getting this stuff into the hands of non-
engineering employees. Build the "Excel" of APIs, if you will?)

~~~
maxaf
The last thing this world needs is mission-critical software edited willy-
nilly through a "convenient" web browser interface. We as an industry can
barely put our pants on in the morning on the best of days, and now this.

~~~
ben_jones
He or she who has not edited production code or configurations with
vim/emacs/nano cast the first stone.

~~~
stephenr
Hopefully those who have done it, know why its a fucking terrible idea to use
this as your default MO.

There are exceptions to every rule, that doesn't mean you should make shitting
all over the rule your own new rule.

~~~
ben_jones
Agreed. IMO it's always during an emergency where it's a decision between
fixing the server in 20 seconds, or 5 minutes via the normal deployment
pipeline.

~~~
grncdr
What's interesting here is that c9 + lambda would make your normal deployment
pipeline much less than 20 seconds

~~~
ben_jones
I'm including a continuous integration step as "normal deployment pipeline".
Probably code review and other steps as well. The point is emergency is always
--forced.

------
pibefision
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 really recommend to watch it live to understand it.

~~~
piffey
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?

~~~
oldmanjay
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.

~~~
RegEx
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.

------
adamors
I thought for a second Amazon is getting into the esports business.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud9_(eSports)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud9_\(eSports\))

~~~
mevile
I don't understand e-sports teams. They're not representative of a
geographical region and a "team" can actually have players on multiple games.
It's like if the New York Yankees were just the Yankees and also played
football, soccer and basketball. I don't understand the convention for how
spectators are intended to root for a team. I get that this thing in regular
sports for rooting for the team closes to you is arbitrary, but at least it's
clear fun way to be a part of it.

Also in esports a lot of the event hype feels manufactured and forced.

I do like watching esports though, I just think there's so much room for
improvement in the whole way the thing is presented.

~~~
spdionis
Usually root for specific players/their teams and don't really pay much
attention to the team name/provenience.

Remember that most teams are named after their sponsor. A sponsor is not
related to any city/esport. It's just a sponsor.

~~~
duskwuff
> Remember that most teams are named after their sponsor. A sponsor is not
> related to any city/esport. It's just a sponsor.

It's a bit more complicated than that, actually. Most of the large esports
organizations (examples: Evil Geniuses, Cloud 9, Fnatic, Team Liquid) have an
identity that's separate from both their sponsors and their teams. Teams that
represent a single sponsor are pretty rare -- I've seen a few, but they're not
common.

------
mark_l_watson
Seems like a smart move by Amazon if they integrate cloud9 as a standard
service.

I liked Google's web based IDE when I was a contractor there and for about a
year I experimented with using nitrous.io. Right now I am experimenting with
using codeanywhere pointed at my own large server instance.

It is tremendously convenient having one development environment set up that
can be accessed from all of my devices. Hopefully Amazon will raise the bar.

~~~
kminehart
If you're experimenting with cloud-based IDEs you might look at Eclipse Che.

------
Secretmapper
Acqui-hiring at its finest. Amazon just wants to get Surefour.

In all seriousness though, I agree with the general sentiments here. I really
hope C9 doesn't get shutdown, it's incredibly nifty and I've found it saving
my butt a few times (quick set up for teaching new devs, working on a borrowed
machine, working on university* , etc)

* ports aside from 80/433 are blocked, so I couldn't push/pull reliably. I ended up uploading everything to c9, then just using it to push/pull.

~~~
chrisper
>ports aside from 80/433

No SSL? Boo! ;)

------
jay-saint
I assume they will also be changing their hosting over to AWS soon, so they
can remove this bit from their features page. > VMs hosted on Google Cloud >
We know that latency is important and Google knows how to deal with global
availability. This is why you will get all the benefits of Googles
infrastructure for free.

------
mrmch
For running a developer event like BattleSnake.io, C9 is amazing.

After a few years of headaches trying to help students get their local dev
environments setup, we started recommending Cloud9 to all Students. Definitely
the way of the future.

~~~
8note
battlesnakes was soo fun this year!

though part of my team spent most of the time in the food lines, which was a
bit of a setback:P

~~~
mrmch
Haha, we'll work on better food line throughput next year :)

------
arahaya
The best cloud IDE now with the biggest cloud service. little scary but very
interesting at the same time

~~~
jecyll
Amazon works coniniously to become the provider for everything you can imagine

~~~
goldenkey
Even the best job? Because working for them was the worst work environment I
ever experienced in 15 years of employment as a software development engineer.

Amazon may have some cheap prices and their customer service has the margins
available to offer refunds/replacements quickly. But that all is easy guise.
Amazon is rotten inside. Each product team does whatever it wants. So how long
can the exterior hold a toxic spill?

Those AWS dashboard icons look really nice. Makes everything look so organized
and contiguous. But each of those services is done in different languages,
different frameworks, by different teams, with whatever crap will hold the
leaks and terrible patchwork programming by their average employee who will on
average, stay less than a year. The churn is real.

~~~
api
Cheap prices for the customer equal low pay and bad working conditions for the
producer. Same is true of Wal-Mart... look into all those Chinese mega-
factories where all that stuff is produced.

It's one of the core paradoxes of economics. I want a cushy job with great
pay, but when I go shopping I implicitly want everyone else to have a shitty
job with low pay. There's a name for this paradox but I'm forgetting it right
now.

It's very similar to the paradox of thrift: it's in my interest to save, but
for me to save someone else must be spending. If everyone saves nobody can
save.

Almost everything in economics is a paradox since there are two columns in
accounting-- every transaction has a counter-party. It's bizarre for something
_not_ to be a paradox in economics.

~~~
tmorton
This solution to this "core paradox" is the idea of gains from trade -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gains_from_trade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gains_from_trade)

If everyone has the same capabilities and preferences, then the economy is a
zero-sum game like you've described. In some fields, that's close to true, and
those fields tend to be low-margin commodities.

------
martin-adams
I absolutely love the Cloud9 IDE. I've been using the source download to host
it directly on my development VM as well as in the cloud (using Digital Ocean
and CloudAtCost).

The editor is really nice and I absolutely love the ease of window snapping
and tailing log files using the command line panel.

Before Cloud9 I used PHP Storm. Still a very good editor, but I love editing
files on cloud hosted machines as I can move from desktop to desktop and
continue right where I left off.

Here's a script reference that I use to set it up:
[https://github.com/medatech/ubuntu-setup-
scripts/blob/master...](https://github.com/medatech/ubuntu-setup-
scripts/blob/master/setup-cloud9.sh)

------
cityzen
Every time i hear the words "acquired by amazon", I think of the amazing Woot
video announcing they were... acquired by Amazon:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnCHCcveteA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnCHCcveteA)

------
webtechgal
I checked a bit, but did not find even a hint of valuation anywhere... Would
be interesting to know the deal value.

~~~
webtechgal
Here is what TechCrunch says:

"Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed but we’re trying to find out. And
we’ve also reached out to Amazon for a direct confirmation of the deal."

and

"Cloud9 had raised just over $5 million from investors that included Accel and
Balderton..."

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/14/amazons-aws-buys-
cloud9-to...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/14/amazons-aws-buys-cloud9-to-
add-more-development-tools-to-its-web-services-stack/)

------
rjurney
I started using Cloud9 a few weeks ago, and my productivity running an
interactive visualization app has gone way up. Cloud9 has the best
autocomplete ever, and it 'just works' after you do a little environment setup
in your included ubuntu instance. Any concerns I had were not a problem, like
every day or two the cloud9 window crashes, but when it reopens the cursor is
in the exact same place and all state is maintained. I don't even get that
locally across reboots!

If this service doesn't keep running I will chain myself naked to the front
doors of amazon's offices and won't let anyone in until they agree to bring
back cloud9. It would seem to have big potential with the rest of amazon's
services.

My stack (if you're curious): JRuby / Sinatra, d3.js. Keeps it lean.

Oh, my one gripe! I keep the IDE window full size, so whenever I switch
applications and tab back to Chrome... my full sized window is gone. I have to
select window -> my tab, and this SUCKS. IT SUCKS. I wish this were wrapped in
a little 'chrome as an app' application.

~~~
isaacn
If you're on a mac, this might work for you:
[http://fluidapp.com/](http://fluidapp.com/)

~~~
rjurney
You are the MAN!

------
ebbv
Congratulations C9. My team uses C9 literally all day every day, and I hope
this only means you'll have more resources at your disposal for faster
iteration.

My only concern is that this could possibly mean getting rid of SSH
Workspaces. Please don't let that happen. SSH Workspaces are required for us,
and if that goes away we will have to find another solution.

------
spriggan3
I hope they won't be shut down in 6 month , C9 is handy when it comes to
trying new techs quickly.

~~~
0xmohit
C9 only adds to existing AWS offerings. Don't see a reason that it'd be shut
down.

~~~
hueving
If it's basically an acquihire then that's exactly what happens. Remember
sparrow?

~~~
0xmohit
The point was that C9 offerings are likely to continue. The branding might
change.

~~~
Cederfjard
That was your original point, but the person replying to you made a
counterargument to your assertion that you don't see any reason for them to
discontinue the service - that maybe they are after the team and their
knowledge, rather than the product. Maybe Amazon want them working on
something else.

------
benologist
C9 is my favorite web IDE. Being open source made it so much better than their
competitors because you could install it locally to take advantage of your own
hardware. It's really cool that they got acquired vs the fleet of mostly
proprietary alternatives.

~~~
e12e
I tried looking at the github project - can you self-host it in the sense that
you could set it up on a server in your home, and use it without needing
access to the Internet?

I suppose it might be more clear if I install and run the "core" \- but there
was no mention of docker or vm support, nor root access?

~~~
benologist
Yes, I automated setup here for Chromebooks running crouton (Ubuntu ~14.04) as
an example -

[https://github.com/benlowry/chromeos-dev-
setup/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/benlowry/chromeos-dev-
setup/blob/master/setup.sh#L129)

------
benten10
HA! Just yesterday a friend wanted to bet that they'd be soon acquired by
GOOG/MSFT!

For any services/products outside Google, Cloud9 is truly the only service I
have been really excited about. So much so that I've replied to their various
automated emails thanking them for their services, and they've replied back.
Love, love, love it so much. It is _so_ simple. I'm glad for the founders and
the team, but I _really_ hope Amazon keeps up the amazing support and the
product they have.

------
jjuel
I obviously follow eSports too much because this was not the first thing that
came to my mind when I saw Cloud9.

~~~
blahi
[http://imgur.com/kZlyN61?r](http://imgur.com/kZlyN61?r)

------
pbreit
I've always been intrigued by Cloud9 and its ilk but can't figure out what is
the best thing to do on it.

What are some great use cases for this type of tool? Is it mainly for quick
testing or temporary stuff? Or would you use it for something longer term?
Indie developer or team?

~~~
genericacct
Anything web-related, whether you are an individual or a team. I use it solo
but the real-time collaboration and builtin chat must be great for teams.

------
supergeek133
I've used Nitrous and Cloud9 both quite a bit... I tend to prefer C9 for Web
Dev and Nitrous for full stack Ruby dev.

Nice to see these products taking off from a pure cost perspective, I can buy
a chromebook and do development as long as I have an internet connection.

------
enitihas
Does anyone know the reasons behind this acquisition?

~~~
KuiN
The current editor for AWS Lambda functions is nothing to write home about and
has some really severe limitations; for example you're unable to edit any code
that uses more than 1 file (that has to be uploaded in a zip every time).

Having a high quality editor built into Lambda would make it so much easier to
work with.

~~~
maratd
This doesn't make sense? The editor is open source. You can install it on your
computer right now. They even provide instructions on how to do it.

[https://github.com/c9/core](https://github.com/c9/core)

They can implement it without buying the company.

Even if the license doesn't allow it, the license for ACE surely does and ACE
is the meat of the editor.

[https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace](https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace)

Maybe they want the team because they want to move the product in a certain
direction? I don't know.

~~~
purplerabbit
He means the AWS Console editor for Lambda functions.

------
kin
Congrats to the team! My first node.js experience was with Cloud9 IDE and the
experience was great. I built a real-time multiplayer Bomberman clone
extremely fast and it definitely helped me get hired in my past two jobs.

------
gd2
I like this. When testing my cloud9 account I thought it was a still rough
edged proto-type of the future. I wasn't ready to change my workflow, but
thought very interesting.

Congratulations to the cloud9 team.

------
rdslw
That makes me smiling over memories of running X client in 1997 over ssh to X
server on some uni host.

That was remote VM, some of the younger ones think are invented 20 years later
;)

------
sorenjan
Does anybody else think that Microsoft might build a similar web based Visual
Studio soon? They already have their Visual Studio Code that's built with web
tech, and a bunch of web based Office apps. Combine that with Azure and they
basically have the best position in the market if they so choose. I'd probably
still prefer the native VS though.

------
ar0b
I've been looking to set up a cloud IDE and was wondering if anyone could
compare / offer insight into Cloud9 vs. Eclipse Che?

~~~
TylerJewell
Hi - I am the Eclipse Che project lead.

Cloud 9 and Eclipse Che are different beasts. The primary difference is around
the definition of a workspace. Eclipse Che workspaces have an encapsulation
that include their runtimes and a self-hosted IDE. This, then, allows you to
run Eclipse Che as a workspace server on any server or desktop. And since the
workspaces are defined with configuration files you can move workspaces from
one server to another.

The SDK is entirely open source - with no restrictoins, so there is a
development model for how to customize both the IDE and the workspace.

Since workspaces embed their own runtimes, you can use Dockerfiles to create
completely customized stacks. And we'll be supporting composefiles shortly.

We built Che this way to encourage ISVs to adopt for ucsotmization while also
providing a simple IDE for developers. Codenvy uses Che to build out a
distributed system that they host at beta.codenvy.com and also is installable
by customers behind their firewall.

Cloud 9 is primarily a fully hosted SaaS with their IDE. The IDE features are
similar but different, with C9 having more work around collaboration of users
within the shared environment.

There is more details beyond this - but this is the essence.

~~~
ar0b
Thank you very much!

------
agmcleod
It definitely does a lot more than when I first looked into it. Someone
tuesday night was trying to get a bootstrap repo using webpack dev server on
cloud9. She had a local node install, so i had her use that instead, simply
because I wasn't familiar with c9. She showed me her node+react app fully
running on it though, which I thought was pretty damn cool.

------
greenspot
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.

------
consultutah
Very interesting. This could be very similar to what Heroku was in the
beginning before they pivoted.

------
terda12
I have not used c9 yet so I can't attest to how good it is, but I've seen a
lot of beginner webdevs use c9 and lots of them only have good things to say
about it. So let's hope amazon doesn't ruin things here.

------
shepardrtc
This will be a great way to connect to individual EC2 instances. You'll be
able to automatically get a shell, a tree file browser, and a text editor all
in one webpage without have to fiddle with anything.

------
shams93
Its cool but since i live in emacs having a tiny aws reserved instance for
development is a cheap way to get a dedicated linux machine connected to the
web 24/7

------
pmarreck
So how do I log into my cloud9 account, now? I was using it sporadically and
actually paid for the non-free version

------
bochenski
I used this service a few years back and am pleased to see it's been
successfully acquired.

------
mgrennan
One step closer to just Code And Run (CAR).

I think CAR is how development will be done in the future. (Literally
tomorrow)

~~~
namenotrequired
> mgrennan 23 hours ago > (Literally tomorrow)

Oh ok... I'll check back in an hour :)

------
caub
also.. [https://community.c9.io/t/credit-card-required-for-free-
acco...](https://community.c9.io/t/credit-card-required-for-free-account/7434)

------
napperjabber
Cool, now we might have a better API/Dev-Env for things like AWS Lambda and
such.

------
lucaspottersky
none of these Cloud IDEs support docker-based projects, at least for now.
that's a bummer for me.

I spent a whole week trying Cloud9, Nitrous and Eclipse-che.

Pros: good for teaching, colaboration, toy projects. Cons: still a few years
behind any decent IDE.

~~~
TylerJewell
Why do you say that Eclipse Che doesn't support docker-based projects? You can
run Che in privileged mode, which lets your Docker workspace build and run
other Docker projects.

I am the Che project lead.

------
santiagobasulto
We make heavy use of C9 for our code academy. I hope they don't shut it down
:(

------
kefka
Well, here's something I IPFS-ified. It's a Node-Red but in the browser.
Called PageNodes

[http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSCrZUPkqH4gsncsD7tGXPiFpymsbwmywsHXLDh...](http://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSCrZUPkqH4gsncsD7tGXPiFpymsbwmywsHXLDhBtSQ6T/)

------
netcraft
I wonder if this is at all related to their version of google cloud shell?

------
nocman
Interesting. I wonder if there will be any trademark issues with the IT
consulting company that uses the same name (
[http://cloud9.net](http://cloud9.net) ).

~~~
skizm
Or the e-sports team: [http://cloud9.gg/](http://cloud9.gg/)

------
limeyy
Would I be able to run Sublime there?

------
Nemant
Welcome to the Amazon sweatshop.

------
nerdcity
Oh. Not the esports organization.

------
metaos
the first time i tried node.js was using cloud9. what a sad sad day to see
them fall onto the black list.

------
dschuetz
Bye-bye Cloud9. T'was a great product. Now Amazon owns it. Too bad that you've
chosen to get Richey-f*cking-Rich rich.

------
amelius
From their homepage:

> Cloud9 combines a powerful online code editor with a full Ubuntu workspace
> in the cloud

This is the first thing I see on loading their website. Is this their main
selling point? Why does my editor need to be "in the cloud"? It works
perfectly fine on my local machine, and I could even automate syncing if I
wanted. Also, I could just ssh into my server and start an editor there.

> Build WordPress, Django and Rails websites and test in 300+ browser/OS
> combinations.

Is this automated? Because who would want to test 300+ browser/OS combinations
manually?

~~~
imtringued
>Also, I could just ssh into my server and start an editor there.

Hey, you just answered your own question. Beginners no longer have to setup
their own machine/server, they can simply create an account on c9.io, they
don't even have to pay for it and bam you have a full ubuntu workspace ready
instantly without any effort which is very useful for teaching them their
first programming language.

~~~
zeveb
> Beginners no longer have to setup their own machine/server, they can simply
> create an account on c9.io, they don't even have to pay for it and bam you
> have a full ubuntu workspace ready instantly without any effort

I already have a full Linux workspace ready instantly. I'm typing this in it
right now. It's my laptop.

Linux is so simple to use now that my liberal-arts relatives are using it. Why
use expensive, legacy, less-powerful OSes like Windows or macOS when Linux is
available? Why run something over a net link when Linux can run locally?

~~~
rickr
Using Firefox/Chrome on a linux box doesn't really compare to getting a dev
environment setup.

For a rails app it's not a stretch to have to install postgres, rvm, ruby,
some compiled gems, and redis. Then you need to make sure postgres and your
rails server are running.

These aren't insurmountable and we can write documentation around it but
compare that to 'Log into c9.io, copy this workspace and work on a ticket'.

I work with people that want to learn how to program and I hear feedback that
getting an environment setup is overwhelming somewhat regularly. These online
IDEs look like they can really combat that.

