When comparing Codepen 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 Codepen is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose Google Cloud Shell is:
Google Cloud Shell is free for Google Cloud Platform customers.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easily export your pen
CodePen makes it really easy to export code as a zip or Github Gist.
Pro Real time output
Pro Lots of support for frameworks and preprocessors
CodePen has an impressive amount of support for preprocessors (such as Jade, Haml, Slim, Sass, Less, Stylus, Coffeescript and PostCSS). There is also plenty of frameworks and libraries to pick from (Foundation, Bootstrap, Angular, D3, Backbone, Ember etc.).
Pro Great display/profile page
The codepen profile page allows you to display all of your public pens, and control which order you want them to be viewed in. This is great for showing off your work to possible employers, other devs etc..
Pro Easily fork pens
To fork a pen only requires clicking one button, and you'll be able to modify the pen on your own account.
Pro Great community pens
You can search through other pens, either by keyword or popular, picked or recent.
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 No private pens with free account
There is an option on Codepen for private pens, however it requires upgrading to a Pro account ($9/month).
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.