During 90s the choice of development environments were very limited. UNIX environment developers used VIM or EMACS. Microsoft Windows users were narrowed down to NotePad or Eclipse.
Fast forward to 21st century and the internet is flooded with IDEs. Until a few years back, most of the IDEs were software packages which used to get installed in the OS. But with adevnt of Cloud Computing and Storage, IDEs also made a way into the cloud. Apart from code storage, many provide further services like compiling or interpreting tools, multilingual syntax validator, suggestive tools, version control and hosting. Interesting enough, most of them are also free, integrate with GitHub or BitBucket as well.
There is not a clear winner right now. Here are a few of them which you should definitely give a try.
One of the most aesthetically pleasant and astonishingly open source is the Cloud9 IDE. It has focused itself specifically on web developement. Apart from integrating with version control and storage services like GitHub or BitBucket, it also has a capability to connect with Windows Azure, Openshift by RedHat and Heroku to deploy the apps. It also supports team collaboration, which means that multiple people can work on the same code. Connecting via FTP or SSH helps to visualize the complete file tree.
The code editor is really attractive with support for 23 most popular languages like PHP, JavaScript, Ruby and Python. It also has different themes and loads of features like drag-n-drop, multiple focus, autocomplete and project search option. It has a JavaScript engine to debug your code. You can also connect to terminal and run package managers like gem and npm. Overall, Cloud9 is a winner in all aspects.
ShiftEdit digs a little deeper when it comes to storage with support for Dropbox and Google Drive. It has a chrome extension which makes it a little fast to access. It has support for 8 languages.
Its code editor has all the features like auto-complete, undo, jump lines, auto indentation and WYSIWYG editor for designing. Overall, it is suitable for developers who love a basic editor and want to do rest by themselves. Nonetheless, it serves most purposes.
Now this is no-bullshit-and-only-compiling ide. Supports most languages and also with their significant different versions. C, C++, JAVA(with different versions), PHP , Ruby or weird languages like bc, intercal, brainf**k, Oz, Pari or oldies like TCL, Cobol, Assembler, Fortran or any language, it has support for all. Apart from that, it has several options for STDIN so that the time is not wasted on it and focus remains on algorithm.
It has code privacy options as well ranging from totally public to completely private. This one works best when it comes to online competitions. Smooth, fast and atleast prevents crashing one's system when disastrous code is compiled like fork bomb etc.
This one is for the people who feel that local development is too good and prefer to keep the compiling part to themselves. This IDE is a Chrome App and stores the code in Dropbox. Rest is all upto you on how you manage the environment. In my opinion, it never makes you feel that your code is away from you.
Now it would be wrong to call it an IDE. It is a complete Virtual Machine which provides terminal control with root access, pre installed Ruby, Python and PHP as langauges. It has MongoDB and MySQL too for database. Install whatever you like and continue on.
Team collaboration is really defined here. Social network type profiles for all developers with LinkedIn type skill grading and recommendations. WYSIWYG editor also has a place in case designing is required.
Frameworks like Django, Ruby on Rails, CodeIgniter, Laravel or even Bootstrap can be initiated with one click and works with least hassles. CMS like Wordpress are also configured so that they can be customized. When it comes to the server, it has a subdomain option which ensures that you do not lose time in deploying the code. Best part is that it tries to retain the experienced developers too. Yes, they can VIM with all its features live on browser!
It also has collaborative environment system along with realtime monitoring. It helps to evaluate the performance of candidates.
This IDE is easy to compile and share. It usually is good for one page scripts. HackerEarth editor records how you code and you can share that with someone else too! Most langauges anyone requires for competition purpose are available in it.
So these are few of the best IDEs each with serving a different purpose. Although their age is young but days are not far away when Chrome OS will be promoted all work will be done on browser itself. Even as of today these eliminate a lot of hardwork to set up environment and code storage. Using only Windows is also possible because as of now, most of such development takes place in Linux environment.
Overall using any of such tool is a clear step into future and we need to move on!