Just got a chance to try out a cloud programming environment that let's you develop .net apps within the browser (http://coderun.com/ide/) I found it pretty interesting, since I was able to develop a mockup ASP.net site on an IPad.
With javascript engines in browsers becoming faster and faster, cheap server infrastructure to compile on; will the cloud become the IDE platform of the future?
Mozilla Bespin did this a while back, and while it is an interesting idea I don't see enough substantial benefits yet to point to this model and say "this is where we'll be in 15 years". But, with connectivity basically becoming Always On everywhere for every device that you may develop on, the idea of a browser-based IDE isn't all that far-fetched either. Since Google can build an OS that's entirely browser-based, now we can develop in it, right?
Like any other technology decision, there are many pros and cons, but let me give you the elephant in the room, and that is trust.
No matter how much you assure customers that your data is safe and secure, there will always be a substantial percentage of companies (and government entities) that (for many reasons, including legal ones) will not hand their data over to another entity. Ever.
I made a major miscalculation in the early 90s when I said that the Internet would never take off because the browsers at the time were not consumer-friendly. Microsoft came out with IE and pretty much changed the game overnight. I'm not going to be wrong about a major shift again.
It's just a matter of time before individuals leverage a MobileMe-type computing infrastructure and businesses shift costly IT infrastructure to third parties. My only realistic cavaet about cloud computing all along has been that users and corporations don't like the idea of personal or valuable information being off premises. Slowly but surely whether it be trusting social networks or relying on SaaS, everything is trending towards trusting the cloud: the core benefit being cost. Once that trust is fully established it'll be hard for anything to stop the momentum.
It'll always have it's uses. I doubt many people would prefer using that over a normal (as in local) IDE. But there are times when you don't have access to an IDE, such as for the iPad. It's possible that it could take off in the mobile world. But I think the percentage of programmers who want to program away from a desktop and have a mobile device that has access to the internet but not capable of running a local IDE is pretty low. However, these kind of devices are taking off, and most of the producers don't allow applications like compilers. So I can imagine this "Cloud Programming" taking off in the situations where there is no alternative.
I haven't looked into what this is capable of, but it might be useful for pair programming over the internet, in which case I'm sure a lot of hobbyists will find it useful.
Overall, I don't think this product will replace very many current IDE's, but it might bring the capability to program to new places.
Presume that "Cloud Computing" is PaaS and/or IaaS... "Hosted systems, applications, services, and storage" then we have been "Programming in the cloud" via IDEs, CDEs, and similar since mainframes. My teams have programmed from half a world away in the cloud via remote sessions running on mainframes, server clusters, dedicated servers and VMs, team servers, shared project servers, ... etc. for decades; although most of those hosts were in "Private Clouds."
Evolution happened and happens, as your link and other links demonstrate IDEs , CDEs, and similar are available in the public cloud today. Evolution will also resolve trust issues.
By their very nature and sensitivity some things must and always be “dark” … secured away in areas with no communication capabilities except internally… as they are now in the dark private clouds.
New "cloud forms" unknown in nature and name by us today will evolve and emerge from the mist of the cloud and elsewhere. Perhaps one day “Cloud Computing” will evolve into something we may name “Universe Computing” or “??? Computing” What would “Universe Computing” or “??? Computing” be?