Docker on my old MacBook was making the fan sound like a leaf blower. Multiple containers? Forget it. So I tried these cloud dev platforms. They all work, sort of, but they're completely different approaches to the same problem.
Replit: When You Just Want to Code Something
I discovered Replit while trying to quickly prototype a REST API during a client meeting. Opening a browser tab and having a working Python environment in 2 seconds felt like magic. No Docker setup, no virtual environments, no "it works on my machine" bullshit.
What actually works:
- Instant everything - click a template, start coding
- Sharing a live coding session just works (shared the link, client could see my code in real-time)
- Deployment is stupidly simple - hit deploy, get a URL
- The Replit Database is just a key-value store, but it's there when you need it
- Real-time collaboration beats any other platform I've tried - just share a link and multiple people can edit simultaneously
- Ghost Writer AI is actually decent for simple tasks - generates boilerplate code and explains complex functions
- Built-in package management handles dependencies automatically
- Version history saved my ass multiple times
- Always-on hosting keeps your apps running 24/7
The stuff that'll drive you crazy:
- My environment reset twice and took my changes with it. No warning, just back to the last save.
- Performance is fine for web stuff, terrible for anything heavy. Tried processing some images and it just gave up after 30 seconds
- AI credits vanish fast. Spent like $25 in three days just building a React app
- Still charges you $20/month even if you don't use it. Paid for two months while traveling and barely touched it
- Free tier maxes out at 0.5 vCPU and 512MB RAM - basically unusable for anything real
- Storage caps at 10GB unless you pay more. Hit it immediately with
node_modulesand some Docker stuff - No internet = no work. Tried coding on a plane once. Big mistake
- Python environments randomly break and you have to rebuild them. Happened twice last month
I use Replit for demos, quick prototypes, and when I need to collaborate with junior developers. It removes all the friction but don't expect it to replace your main dev environment.
Cursor: VS Code but the AI Actually Helps
After getting tired of GitHub Copilot suggesting console.log('hello world') for everything, I tried Cursor. It's basically VS Code with AI that doesn't completely suck.
Where it shines:
- The AI completion actually understands context across multiple files
- Tab completion predicts entire functions correctly about 70% of the time
- Chat mode can refactor existing code without destroying everything
- Runs locally so it's fast and works offline
- Composer feature can write entire components from scratch
- Privacy mode keeps your code from training their AI models
- Multi-model support - GPT-4, Claude 3.5, and more
- Command palette integration makes AI accessible anywhere
- VS Code extension compatibility - all your favorite extensions work
- Git integration identical to VS Code
The reality check:
- Battery dies fast and laptop runs hot as hell. Can't use it on my lap anymore when the AI is working hard
- Twenty bucks a month is reasonable if you code every day. Waste of money if you don't
- AI gets cocky and suggests solutions that look right but are completely wrong. Spent an hour debugging perfectly formatted garbage
- Extension compatibility isn't perfect - some language servers conflict with Cursor's AI features
- Heavy users hit limits fast. My coworker got a $40 overage bill after a weekend hackathon
- Model switching UI is confusing. Took forever to figure out which one to use when
- Big projects take like 30 minutes to index before AI works. Useless until then
- Sometimes the AI just stops working and you have to restart the whole thing. No idea why
I switched to Cursor as my daily driver for new projects. The AI genuinely speeds up routine coding tasks, but you still need to know what you're doing.
GitHub Codespaces: For Teams That Live in GitHub
Codespaces made sense for my team because we were already using GitHub for everything. Having dev environments that spin up pre-configured with all our tools seemed ideal.
The good parts:
- Environment consistency across the team (no more "works on my machine")
- Integrates perfectly with GitHub Actions and PRs
- Can spin up powerful VMs when you need them
- Great for onboarding - new devs get a working environment immediately
- Dev container support means reproducible environments
- Port forwarding makes testing web apps simple
- Prebuilds reduce startup time for complex projects
- Secrets management integrates with GitHub
- Live Share for pair programming
- Terminal access with full Linux environment
The reality:
- Startup time kills your flow. Sixty seconds is forever when you're trying to fix something quick. I've lost count of how many times I started one then forgot what I was doing while waiting
- The hourly pricing is sneaky. Left a 4-core instance running over a weekend and got a $30 surprise. Storage costs add up too with all those Docker layers
- Connection drops happen at the worst times. VS Code just freezes mid-sentence and sometimes you lose stuff
- Our bill exploded from $50 to like $250 a month once the whole team started using it. Everyone forgets to shut down their instances
- If the container hangs, killing the terminal process usually fixes it. Learned this the hard way
- Timeout settings suck. Either kills your session while you're thinking or wastes money when you walk away
- Latency is annoying if you're not in the US. Our guy in India says there's like a 200ms delay on everything
- The 2-core instances are too slow. 4-core works but costs add up. 8-core is fast but expensive as hell
We use Codespaces for complex feature work and pair programming, but most day-to-day coding happens locally because of the startup latency.
