Online IDEs for Learning how to Code
I’ve started to code almost 25 years ago and back then you had to type stuff in a vim-like editor on the black/green CRT screen. You also had to follow instructions from a book how to wire up things so that your BASIC interpreter would be able to run your code.
Things were not easy and we often felt like 🤠working with loose cattle.
Welcome to the Future! It’s 2019 and today you almost don’t need to set up a computer for coding. I’m writing this article using a wonderful online IDE (GitPod). Things got easier, a lot easier.
Here is my list of tools. I use them regularly to sketch small pieces of my apps, to learn or practice with new tech, or when I teach to classes.
👉 Repl.it
Repl runs a huge list of backend languages.
In this example, I’m using @forrestjs/hooks to run a small Express server with two custom routes in NodeJS.
👉 CodeSandbox.io
Codesandbox provides VSCode in your browser. It’s powerful and can run more or less whatever you may think to run with Webpack or similar tools.
👉 CodePen.io
Codepen is quite famous for showcasing HTML/CSS/JS frontend stuff. It supports many different Javascript-based languages and CSS pre/post processors.
The best feature of Codepen is the huge amount of available visual examples. It’s great.
More…
There are plenty of other tools out there, these are just the ones I feel more comfortable with.
And you? What do you use?