Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses develop and deploy applications. In addition to saving time and money, it ensures that developers don’t have to rely solely on coding on their local machine and hope for the best when everything is finally pushed to production. Cloud computing has become such a staple in modern computing that it’s predicted to become a business necessity by 2028. Continue reading to learn why the adoption of cloud computing is beneficial and why it’ll change and enhance software development.
What is cloud development?
Cloud development refers to the process of creating, testing, and deploying applications in the cloud. These applications are designed to be scalable, flexible, and run on any device with an internet connection.Â
Cloud computing usage has surged because it maximizes operational efficiency while not requiring massive hardware investment. A large part of your infrastructure, including hardware, can be managed by a third-party provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS), saving time and ultimately cutting costs.
What is a cloud development environment (CDE)?
A cloud development environment (CDE) is an integrated, hosted set of tools and cloud-based services for writing, testing, and debugging code. You can think of it as a local integrated development environment (IDE) supercharged with cloud capabilities. Whether working on a simple application or a complex distributed system, a CDE puts everything at your fingertips, from source code and version control to continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines (CI/CD).
Imagine that you’re working on a microservices-based application. Using a CDE, you can fire up multiple containers or virtual machines (VMs) to emulate the system, test any integrations, and debug in real time. This task would be nearly impossible or at least hard to replicate on a single developer’s machine.
There are many CDE vendors to choose from and many self-hosted environments you can manage yourself. Platforms like Coder are a viable alternative to hosted services like Gitpod and GitHub Codespaces.
How does cloud development work?
Cloud development requires access to a web-based or client-based remote environment, which is pre-configured to have the tools, libraries, and dependencies necessary for development. The code is usually stored in a remote repository, where real-time changes are synchronized, preferably via a Git-based version control system (VCS). The build process, testing, and deployments happen in the cloud. The service offloads this from the local hardware onto the cloud using powerful compute resources that can scale on demand.
For example, you may be working on a web application and utilizing something like GitHub Codespaces or Gitpod, which places a full development environment in the cloud. This capability allows you to test your application against different configurations—much the same as locally—and simply change the environment settings. In an environment like GitHub, you can start multiple codespaces for a single codebase and work in parallel on different features.
Local development vs. cloud development
Resource availability
| Aspect | Local Development | Cloud Development |
| Compute Power | Limited by local machine specifications | Virtually unlimited, scalable on demand |
| Storage | Limited, requires manual management | Scalable, often includes automated backups |
| Environment Setup | Time-consuming, manual configuration | Preconfigured, quick setup |
Collaboration
| Aspect | Local Development | Cloud Development |
|---|---|---|
| Code Sharing | Requires manual syncing, potential conflicts | Real-time collaboration, easy version control |
| Team Access | Limited to network constraints | Accessible from anywhere with internet |
| Debugging | Often local and isolated | Shared environments for team debugging |
Scalability and flexibility
In the case of a local development environment, most of the time, you’re limited by your machine’s hardware. Running a full-stack application locally might become hard when you have, for example, resource-heavy elements like databases or complex services involved. On the other hand, cloud development environments provide unlimited scalability. You might easily scale your environment up or down according to your needs; this is handy for testing or working on high-demand applications.
Cloud development benefits
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- Scalability: Since cloud environments scale resources up and down according to demand, your development environment is always optimized for performance.
- Collaboration: Many developers can work on the same project at a time. Changes are synced in real time, so there are few merge conflicts, and team productivity is maximized.
- Cost Efficiency: The pay-as-you-go model avoids upfront capital expenditures on local infrastructure.
- Security: Leading cloud providers ensure robust security because of encryption, firewalls, and compliance certificate requirements.
- Accessibility: You can work from anywhere with an internet connection (presuming your organization’s security policy allows it). This capability makes it easier to manage remote teams and distributed development.
Cloud development challenges
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- Latency: Your connection speed and distance from the data center may cause issues affecting your real-time teamwork.
- Cost Management: Although pay-as-you-go models are on demand and cost-effective, they can add up if you’re not tracking spending correctly.
- Tooling Compatibility: Not all tools and services are available for the cloud or optimized for cloud environments, thus limiting your options over local development.
- Learning Curve: Moving to the cloud requires a mindset change and training team members to use new tools and services. This process requires time away from day-to-day responsibilities.
How to set up a cloud development environment
Although it depends on your chosen platform, a CDE can typically be set up in a few minutes. For this demo, we’re relying on GitHub Codespaces to demonstrate how fast it is to spin up an end-to-end development setup for a Flask project. You can try GitHub Codespaces for free for up to 60 hours and get 15GB of storage monthly.
Step 1: sign up/log in to GitHub
Step 2: choose a template
Feel free to try out any templates provided by GitHub. For our demo, we’re using the Flask template.
Step 3: add code and see your changes take effect in real time
Spinning up a session takes a few seconds, giving you all the basic tools to start writing code.
You can always upload your files to the codespace environment by right-clicking the file tree section. To customize your codespace, we recommend reading GitHub’s docs on Codespaces.
Now, we can start changing or writing new code in the editor and see it taking effect in the live preview window (remember to restart the Flask development server).
Step 4: delete or stop a codespace when no longer in use
When you decide to stop writing code and take a break, make sure to stop the running codespace session. You can also choose to destroy the codespace as well.
Next steps and additional resources
The possibilities for optimizing your cloud development workflow are endless, so it’s essential to thoroughly research your options before picking up new development tools. Good luck! We leave you with some additional resources to learn more about CDEs and building applications in the cloud.
