I was trying Codenvy to test a Discord Bot that I've been writing in Java (yes, I know I shouldn't be using Java for a Discord Bot, but blegh! I'm a rebel!), and could not be bothered running it from home on my own computer all the time. After finally getting it to pull my Git repository and updating the maven config (That was a challenge for me as I rarely use Maven for locally hosted libraries), I had to then fix up a bunch of my code since for some reason Codenvy's Java Support doesn't run it with the -source 7 argument, and even when I manually added it it wasn't running properly; so I had to remove all my multi-catch expressions, and my list diamonds and fix it so that it'd support -source 1.5 (or whatever it is.).

A couple of problems I found while using the free trial of Codenvy were the following; * Could not find a way to change the -source tag as I said before. * Could not run my Java application with less than 1GB of ram, even though I knew I could run it with less - It was saying that the application could not be ran with less than 1GB of ram. This in particular annoyed me, as I was hoping that I could run it with only 200MB of ram as I was on my computer, and make the most out of the free 20GB of monthly ram - but nope. * Sometimes the application would straight up fail to start, and when I started it again it worked fine. * It does not have any auto-completing features like Desktop IDEs to auto-fill functions etc. * Even though my classes were in a folder called "src" it could not find my Main class, or literally any of my other classes. Even though it built correctly, within the IDE itself it was saying there were errors whenever I referenced one of my classes... * It couldn't use the Scanner class to receive input from the Terminal - I later found out they removed support for this; but didn't continue on reading since I was in a bit of a rush.

Some pros I found: * When it worked; it worked really well. Like. Reallllly well. The terminal output though was a bit laggy, and might take up to 10 to 20 seconds to update the log; which made debugging a bit of a chore. * The free 20GB of Ram per month seems like it's a cool thing; except it really does limit people who just want to try running their program for an entire day to make sure it works properly. I was trying to gather information about what commands people use the most with my Discord Bot; but since it shuts down after 4 hours; I had to login with my phone when I was out to restart it. But within a day I obviously lost all 20 GB of free ram to use.

Overall; Codenvy is a very nice tool to test online programs. It works well for Java, except for those caveats that I mentioned before.

I'm unable to comment on the Support for Codenvy since I didn't use any, hence why it's at "Ok". Reliability could've been a great if again, those cons weren't there. Ease of use I've given a "Great" even with those cons; because it overall worked, and when it did it was beautiful.

First introduced to Codenvy early 2014, on a data abstraction kick of my own and wearing my Dev-hat far more than is customary, i had instantly a real need for burnable abstracted instances and was running USB clones and chrooting with good success, but Docker/lxc containers, and remote app engines offer a real level of isolation for testing. Protecting you, minimizing variables, and freeing the process from most platform constraints, while lessening configuration differences between devs, and adding some order to mockups and trials.

Having our primary interface apps and projects be replicatable, persistable, scalable instances is a dream, but hey students often run econo limited ram machines, some people even have microsoft, others of us not the right kernel compile this time around. This is the challenge. Its a new world, and Codenvy let me harness without waiting for a kernel update, and gave me a great solution. With a fast an intuitive interface, slick dockerfile integrations, I could jump from a pbx install in php to a bootstrap promo, run a vs comparison to settle what framework this mobile app will be built on, mass clone the express repos and burn through some demos, hot link my top 3 instance types to load from my local webroot menu not even a captcha to stop me, love it!

Customizations, Collaborations, local runs, and quite noticeably FAST. 20 sdk’s to put a 3 function mini-website on a phone just for android? Some technologies its like they are trying to waste my time on purpose. Not gonna happen. Codenvy 15 seconds, zero installs locally? Now we’re getting somewhere. Loading up an android image was the only way i ever was going to go. The programming equivalent of terraforming. My $150 chromebook c7 with ubuntu was tossing planets around like nerf balls, just unstoppable. cool…

My season was planned based on hard data trials and test runs rather than speculation, added payroll for consults, or focus groups and circle jerks. They helped me redefine efficiency for the price of a pizza, personal size. The simple but smart interface means no dicking around with tokens and certs and blood samples, or even an email verify you just hit go, and go.

Codenvy stood out early on as one of the few that gave you an os not a web editor clone. Limitless possibilities gets messy fast, they packaged it up lean, smart, and sensibly. The performance is seriously impressive, no thumb twiddling on my trials. Nice to have a machine ready before you are a luxury I rarely experience, and much appreciate. Codenvy earns there paychecks, and helped me earn mine. I look forward to watching their continued success.

I'm a professional Java developer.

When I got a Chromebook for home use, I wondered how I could code using it -- of course it's possible; my IDE used to be vi in a telnet session. But could I develop as productively as I currently do in a desktop IDE. So I tried Eclipse Che, initially via CodeEnvy.

For anyone familiar with IDEs in general, there are no great surprises. I imported one of my toy Java projects from GitHub. There was a small speedbump in that my project used Gradle -- CodeEnvy does not support this, so I had to write a Maven POM. But once I'd done this, I had something that looked and behaved remarkably like a real IDE (which is what it is).

There is a debugger, and I've seen it work. However on a couple of simple Java projects, I've found Debug missing from the Run menu. I'm used to being able to right-click then Debug a unit test, and I don't see that either.

The big missing link for me, however, is refactoring. A huge part of the TDD coding habits I've developed over the years involve growing code using refactoring shortcuts. For example, write a statement inline, then alt-shift-l to turn it into a local variable. Write a big ugly method then refine it into smaller methods with alt-shift-m. These are all missing from CodeEnvy as I write.

However, I also tried the nightly build of Che, and this has a couple of refactoring menu items ('rename' and 'move'). It seems very likely to me that we'll see more options added very soon.

I don't think I would choose today's Che as my day-to-day IDE, but I would not be at all surprised if a few months from now it's where I need it to be.

Stepping away from CodeEnvy to Che in general, the general idea of your IDE being a collection of Docker containers is fascinating, and shows a great deal of promise.

My Background:

I am a web/data geek mainly focus on Python, AngularJs, Webapp2/Django/Flask and App Engine. (Yes, you pretty much know where I work) I sometime also use pandas, MLLib, R and shiny for data analysis stuff.

Why I use Codenvy:

At my workplace, we have our own online IDE. Beside that , one day, I dropped my macbook pro on the floor, even though it is still usable, I just came up a mind of not using any expensive computers once my macbook pro become an outdated product. I would like to use chromebook in my soon future. However, if I want to do development for my personal project, I will need an online IDE. I try to step by step switching every development to online IDE if possible. I have looked up the internet and found out Codenvy.

Pro:

1. As I said, I usually use python and app engine even for my personal project. Codenvy gives me a great feature of deploying the code to app engine like no brainers. Comparing to HeXXko,even though you can use their online IDE, you can only use their server. I like to keep using google server/app engine. Codenvy is a big plus in this case.

2. Very nice background color.

3. You can check in your code with github and/or subversion.

Cons:

1. No lint check! I need lint check and code length line. Please add pylint on fly.

2. No abilities to add extension like subXXXX text or AtXm.

3. No abilities Make comments sticker/note on code (Or read comments from github?)

4. It will be awesome for single click to open the code file rather than double click.

5. Take too long from to initial loading page to actual code env.

It's amazing how you can object to something so passionately, but flip your attitude altogether when you finally give it a chance. Cloud computing from the outside seems frail and limited in its capacities.

Having grown up in the gray-era between desktop apps and the migration to the cloud, I can relate to many people's reservations. As cloud-computing grows more powerful, though, this conservative position is becoming outdated and invalid. In fact, having used Codenvy now, cloud-computing seems light and agile, compared to the more powerful and heavy-set desktop IDEs.

Much like Google Chrome rejuvenated Internet browsing, Codenvy is helping revolutionize development; however, Google Chrome has grown heavy and slow for many over the years. Although Chrome is still very popular and functional, the browser has lost much of the lite GUI and simplistic design that once shadowed over competitors. I just hope Codenvy can avoid such a path down the road.

So far, Codenvy has a relatively easy to understand design. Navigation bars could use some more thought as far as making the user interface more intuitive. Codenvy's biggest area for potential improvement, though, is debugging and error messages. In fact, this is my only major reason for continuing to use a desktop IDE for the time being. The error messages and debugging capabilities of Codenvy and every other cloud development tool I have tried are utterly lacking compared to popular desktop tools. This one weakness alone for I and many others is enough to negate the elegance of remote-hosting and cloud development.

Over time I think more and more that Codeanywhere is a waste of money.

They prioritise absolutely pointless features over general UX. Let's take a very simple situation... you're coding a page and suddenly you're logged out and redirected to the homepage login form, so everything you've coded leading up to that redirect is lost for good. You can't go back, even after you log in, and you can't get the code back because it didn't save (because you were not logged in).

I can think of at least 4 different, more practical ways in which session expiration could be handled to stop this frustration for users, but Codeanywhere would rather have their developers working on additional container support or new syntax highlighting for languages nobody has even heard of.

Do not waste your money on this garbage. I've been with them long enough to go through at least 2-3 serious situations that could have been prevented if the platform was properly developed.

I have used this product for over a year now and I find it a wonderful addition to my workflow. However, in the time that I have been using it, Shpakovski have updated Codebox 0 times. No upgrades. No additions to the code base. No extended customisation. No extended personalisation. Nothing. Poor form Codebox.

When I tried to clone my GitHub repo, it failed with a mysterious error. Grrr.