Cloud-Based Development Environment (CDE)

A cloud-based development environment (CDE) provides developers access to a virtual development environment hosted in the cloud. Rather than developing locally on their own machines, developers code in the CDE and access resources over the internet.

Key characteristics of CDEs:

  • Accessible from any device through a web browser or client. Enables coding anytime, anywhere.

  • Consistent environment across the team. Eliminates "works on my machine" issues.

  • On-demand provisioning of infrastructure. Scales up and down based on needs.

  • Shared tooling, dependencies, configurations. Streamlines onboarding.

  • Workstation isolation and session persistence. Picks back up exactly where you left off.

CDEs foster collaboration, boost productivity, and provide flexibility. Leading CDE platforms include Codeanywhere, Codespaces, Gitpod, Code Sandbox, and StackBlitz.

Related Definitions

  1. → Standardized Development Environment (SDE)