I imagine the idea behind this was to avoid having to roll an in-browser IDE with the advantage of letting users use (and learn) the actual tooling that comes with that language.
I personally liked using my own editor, but the CLI didn't provide much added value in my opinion. The tests were enough for me and it was kind of annoying to have to run the CLI every time you're finished just to get the next exercise...
Yes, but what's the value in this website having a dedicated application that I either have to trust blindly or evaluate and compile?
We already have this great sandboxed environment called a browser for running untrusted code from the internet. They could still offer endpoints for curl, if it's just about using the command line.
I personally liked using my own editor, but the CLI didn't provide much added value in my opinion. The tests were enough for me and it was kind of annoying to have to run the CLI every time you're finished just to get the next exercise...