> I really like the idea of cloud IDE's

What advantage do you see versus just the ability to edit remote files (which has been around for decades) or sync local files with a server (a.k.a. "cloud storage")? Why suffer the UI limitations (solvable), latency (not solvable), and unreliability (not solvable) of having your development environment sitting on a server somewhere?

So that you could work on glossy iPad, of course!

Well,

I find my self writing code in VIM via ssh using tmux and works fine. You can do pretty much everything on CLI, so I don't see how this is a substitute for VIM when all you need in order to write VIM/emcas code is a remote (secure) shell.

That said, vim is not an IDE, although many prefer (me included) prefer it over an IDE.

I have the same reservations. There are a few notable developers who have blogged in the past abut using Nitrous [1] as their primary development environment, so I'd like to say it's possible.

I wonder though if something like Vim.js [2] couldn't start to get closer to making this a practical tool for my workflow. Between that and having offline support / native app to use, there'd certainly be a lot of benefits. Ultimately though, I think the #1 thing it'd come down to is lag; if there's lag (like ever, including trying to launch the program, when I'm offline, or while I'm typing), it can't be my primary development environment without constant annoyance.

[1] https://www.nitrous.io/

[2] http://coolwanglu.github.io/vim.js/web/vim.html

Many have tried to make Vim in JS, but it never works because doesn't support plugins and all the subtle features of Vim.

The only way it will get done is using a true, automatable port, maybe using Native Client or asm.js.

Until then, I'm reluctantly sticking to Vim in a local shell.

Thank you, this IDE works also on desktop (Mac Application coming soon), here is a video of the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvPEngyXA2A

Codebox will actually be released as a desktop app as well. And I think that's going to be pretty important to have a truly hybrid IDE that runs both on the desktop and in the cloud.

And what's particularly nice is that the cloud IDE and desktop IDE can share 95% of their codebox.

As a result you have an IDE built with web technologies (JS, HTML, CSS, NodeJS) that can run virtually anywhere (desktop, public/private cloud) and you can iterate quickly thanks to the nature of web technologies.

You could always use the JavaScript implementation of vim ;P

This project runs locally. Just npm install -g codebox