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Add to SafariWhen comparing Codio vs Google Cloud Shell, the Slant community recommends Google Cloud Shell for most people. In the question“What are the best cloud IDEs?” Google Cloud Shell is ranked 10th while Codio is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Google Cloud Shell is:
Google Cloud Shell is free for Google Cloud Platform customers.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Designed to teach programming
Pro Fully functional terminal
Codio gives you full access to a terminal, with all the ubuntu commands. You can use the terminal within the page, or you can access by SSH from your computer.
Pro Emmet
Emmet support for a whole range of features that really boost productivity when working with HTML and CSS. These features include expanding abbreviations into full HTML or CSS as well as some very powerful keyboard shortcuts.
Pro BitBucket integration
It's possible to launch Codio from within BitBucket's repo by adding Codio integration as an add-on.
Pro Server-side environment
Pro Node.js included by default.
Pro Monokai
Includes Monokai style theme by Luigi Maselli.
Pro Inexpensive
Google Cloud Shell is free for Google Cloud Platform customers.
Pro Already has Google Cloud SDK and other tooling installed
Thus eliminating a setup step for interacting with Google Cloud.
Pro Already provisioned with Google Application Default Credentials
This makes it easier to run/test code that interacts with Google APIs.
Pro VM is always up-to-date, making it more secure
Because the VM image is managed by Google and either provided entirely by Google or configured by a Dockerfile (which is regularly rebuilt), packages are far more likely to be kept up-to-date with the last patches and security fixes compared with Cloud IDEs that give you your own VM and make you, yourself, in charge of applying updates.
Pro Supports multiple open files at the same time
One can split the screen and edit two files at once, making it easy to edit one file while consulting the contents of some other file.
Pro Supports editor and terminal in the same screen
This makes it easy to run commands while editing files at the same time.
Pro Built-in integration with tmux
Pro Supports "Boost Mode"
Allowing you to provision a more powerful instance when necessary.
Pro Supports custom software packages via a Dockerfile configuring the Cloud Shell image
With Cloud Shell custom environments (an early access feature), it is possible to specify a "Dockerfile" to specify a custom VM image to use for the Cloud Shell environment. This Dockerfile can be used to install packages with apt-get, npm, pip, etc. globally.
Pro Includes Eclipse Orion IDE already configured
Eclipse Orion can be difficult to setup/configure if creating a do-it-yourself VM running Eclipse. This makes it easier to have a working IDE.
Cons
Con Private projects aren't free
The pricing plan looks too restrictive comparing to other Coding Cloud solutions.
Con Ephemeral Disk
Software installed globally as root (such as via "sudo apt-get install..." ) can be lost when restarting Cloud Shell; any software that needs to be persistent has to be installed in the user directory (or made part of the Docker image for the custom Cloud Shell image).
Con Minimal UI
Cloud Shell's editor is not as featureful as some alternatives.
