Koding is a free online IDE with storage space. It lets you develop applications, test and save them on to the cloud storage to make it accessible anywhere and anytime. You can also invite other developers to work with you on the application you’re working on. This online IDE also lets you access a real Ubuntu Terminal and lets you develop application with Python, C, C++ etc. With Koding, you can also share the applications you created and install applications developed by other developers on to your online virtual machine, upload files, update your status just like we do in Facebook and Twitter, access blog posts, get involved in discussions and learn with free tutorials and lot more. By inviting friends, you can get up to 16GB of online space. To add more, it also has an extension for Google Chrome to let you access the Terminal anywhere in the world.
I always wished for a mobile development environment with an online IDE and that’s when I came to know about Koding. Yeah that sounds more like those “As seen on TV” advertisement but this is worth it. Lets see what it has to offer.
The Terminal
This is the favorite part of a developer. I like the look and feel of the inbuilt terminal that is one of the applications pre-installed into your Koding account. You can access this terminal from the Google Chrome extension too. Doing this would let you use the terminal as a Guest but you would not be able to save anything to the server. This however lets you access all the features that you would find in a real Ubuntu Terminal. The terminal with this online IDE, lets you access all the features you would find in a real life Ubuntu Operating System. As you can see from the image above, I used it to create and run a small and simple “Hello World” program that I compiled in C. To do that, I even used my favorite text editor “Nano” and it seems that it highlighted the strings and other keywords for me.
Talk it out
Koding is just not another online IDE that would let you develop some application and keep it for yourself. But, it encourages you to interact with other Koding users. You can post you status to tell the group what you feel like, post a tutorial to become conducive to the community, post a blog and take part in a discussion. Now, I really posted that status and waiting for you to come online and tell us how it was.
Applications
You can browse from a list of applications you want to install. You can see the number of other users who liked the application in the list and how many installed it. The applications available in this online ide can be sorted by its type like, updates, web-apps, add-ons etc. The installation of these applications are pretty easy and you don’t even have to worry about where to install them and provide them more information while the installation is in process. Move your mouse pointer over an application to view more information about the application and to install it, just click on it and confirm the installation by clicking on the “Install” button. Isn’t that simple?
This free online ide also lets you view your files and folders in a panel to the left of the screen. You can open a file by double clicking on it just as you would do on a regular file explorer. You can upload files from your local hard drive too.
Google Chrome Extension
The Google Chrome extension lets you access the Terminal anywhere with just the browser (got to be Chrome to make the Chrome extension work). You can access the terminal as a guest or login to your account to access your files via the terminal and start developing (or just stare at the black screen).
Get Google Chrome add-on for this online ide here
Conclusion
Koding is an absolutely wonderful, distinct and cross-platform, cloud based online ide. Whew! I said all that in one breath. Well, so much to say about this online ide as it lets you do everything that you can on your computer. It provides you with an excellent development environment and proves to be an extensive online ide that put an exuberant smile on your face.
