Wednesday, June 18, 2008

CodeIDE: An Online IDE

Online apps are the way of the future they say, and if you needed more proof there’s now an online IDE for programmers called CodeIDE. CodeIDE is an in-browser development environment that mixes a text field for writing code, a debug panel, a command line input and other tools.
So far CodeIDE supports Basic, Pascal, C++, Perl, Javascript, HTML, MATH and LISP. Registered users get chat tools which can be used to solicit help and advice from other users. If you sign up for an account you’ll also get access to organizational tool like projects and files.
While the text field-based text editor has some impressive features like syntax highlighting, line numbering and search and replace capabilities, I doubt it’s going to replace emacs or Vi for the serious coder.
But aside from the limited text editor feature, CodeIDE is an impressive setup and when used in conjunction with a real text editor the debug features are just a cut-and-paste away. Where applicable (HTML mainly) the debug window auto updates so you can see your markup as you enter it.
While it isn’t all that useful, there’s a nice little AJAXy widget that show live debug results from other users which is kind of fun to watch. There’s also a forum and wiki, though both are a bit short on content since the site just went live a couple of days ago.


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