Site updated at 2013-03-25 16:56:15 UTC
Chakib (spike) Benziane
11 years ago
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layout: post
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comments: true
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categories: [python, programming, IT]
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title: "Development as a Service on its baby steps"
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date: Sun Apr 29 20:26:09 +0200 2012
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---
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Let me start by presenting a new web service [pythonanywhere.com](http://www.pythonanywhere.com/).
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It's a full python development stack, ready to be used in your browser. After a quick subscription for a free account,
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you have access from your dashboard to [python, ipython, bash] consoles in different python flavours.
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You can also browse your files, make cron scripts and create python web apps on the fly.
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The most interesting features are the consoles pause/resume feature, which can be shared
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with other people. This could be very helpful to collaborate on code or teach python.
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Behind the scene, it's an encrypted ajax window over your home folder running on a remote server hosted on EC2.
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DaaS may be on it's first baby steps. Though, it could rapidly become a standard way to code for developers especially in startups.
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Before diving in the pros and cons, let's analyse the different development stacks possibilities.
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First, there's the good old fashion way. Setup a server on a cloud service
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(I guess there's still people doing it with bare metal servers ). You have plenty of choice there, (EC2, AppEngine, Azure, Rackspace...),
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it depends on your IT needs, spiritual beliefs (many don't care) and your pockets.
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Then pick the development stack of your preferred language/framework: Python(Django, Web2py, Pylons, Flask...), Ruby(Ruby On Rails) for the rock stars, Java/.Net, PHP ...
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Here, you have to maintain every piece involved in the process, packages versions, build tools, deployment, scaling. That's a lot of time and resources needed to finally get your developers pushing and your apps running.
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The next big step was the [Heroku](http://www.heroku.com) and [ Dotcloud ]( http://www.dotcloud.com ) like services, aka Deployment/Scaling as a Service.
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They release from the burden of deploying and give enough abstraction to exclusively focus your effort on the application logic.
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The process is often the same, basically setup your project with a simple conf file, then deploy to the server with one command.
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They practically all handle version control systems like git,
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so your project is deployed every time you push your code.
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I believe Github helped a lot making these services exist as deployment is often tightly bound to code revisions, and Github offers an excellent API and a huge community.
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We have been adding more and more abstraction to the development process in order to make it easier, faster, stronger ...
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However, there is still one constant, "localhost development". The coding itself is done on your machine/laptop.You still can use your favourite OS, IDE, tools.
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Well, DaaS is going to cross that last barrier.
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There are already several web services for online development like [jsfiddle.net](http://jsfiddle.net) for web design or [koding.com](http://koding.com).
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They offer something that could change the way we see development, the abstraction of your OS, ide and development environment.
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If you think about it, that's a lot of time saved. No multi-platform mess, no more scripts to ensure the same development stack. Using the enormous processing power
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of cloud platforms, there is virtually no compile time. You can even forget about your machine, all you need is a keyboard and a screen.
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It seems only benefit but the thing is, if DaaS is really going to be the next step,I think we are missing something very important.
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Before a developer learns to code, he has
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to understand the building blocks of programming, what's a computer, what's an Operating System, how does it do its work. All the abstractions we built are built
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using this knowledge. How could a programmer understand code optimization ? Security flows?
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How could he understand the interaction of his code with its environment if he's not gonna use it?
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Maybe we're not concreted with that yet, but the next generations of programmers are.
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What do you think ?
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