[TimJRobinson]

There are 3 other reasons that I use a Web IDE now (started using Cloud9 about 9 months ago)

- When doing client work it's much easier to show clients what you're working on at any time. Don't need to mess around with a staging server and uploading files + DB changes etc.

- All client projects are in their own environment with their own config / env vars / DB. So say a client wants changes made 3 months down the line it's super easy to get the project back in the state it was then. On a local machine I frequently run into problems where I've updated my machine or changed config since last working with them and it takes an hour or two just to get the project going again.

- When learning new languages can just create a new project of that type and it has everything you need ready to go. Especially useful if you have a windows machine where using NodeJS / Rails is often much more painful than it should be.

[TimJRobinson]

Full disclosure: I now work for Cloud9 (wish I could edit this into the above post but HN won't let me now). I wasn't asked to post these points and the reason I recently applied for a job there was because I enjoyed the product so much.

Just wanted to post about why I made the switch to an online IDE because I only realised what a time saver it was for client work after I started using it.