The WIDE: Web-enabled IDE ?

Weiqi recently posted some sample C code as the Friday Quiz.

It has been a long time since I have done C: it isn't installed here at CtJ HQ. Being lazy, I wondered if there was a way to do it over the web.

There is. Ryan Ginstrom referred readers to the Codepad site by Steven Hazel. Very cool.

I don't think Codepad is going to overtake Eclipse anytime soon as an IDE, but I have long wondered if the Web would come to play a larger part of software development than merely being a reference. Call it the WIDE. Here, we have a "syntax scratchpad". In itself, the utility is debatable, but it is also a scratchpad for, say regular expressions, if you are familiar with Perl/Python/etc.

I have some of my own ideas in this regard, but alas I have been lazy and somewhat stymied by my Internet host on a side-project. (This site is hosted on Blogger and not said host.)

Discussion

For now, a question: will the web become so integral to software development that the IDEs actually include a browser as a view?

After all, we generally have Firefox open all the time, and with neatness like Codepad, I think that trend will only continue.

ps. Stephen kindly invites us to try to break his website ;-) Unleash the hounds!