Google IDX hands on

What is Google IDX?

It is an entirely web-based full-stack IDE for developers. Support both frontend and backend development.

How to sign up?

Visit https://idx.dev/ and enroll yourself in the beta. It is free, as of now.

What does it look like?

Pretty similar to VS Code. And it comes with Gemini of course.

Using it

When creating a new project, it shows a list of supported templates that you can choose from. Such as Angular, Go, Python, Rust, Laravel, Flutter, and several more. I created a new Rust CLI app.

1) It has auto-completion from Gemini AI, as well as from indexing.

2) Warn me about type error, since Rust is static and strongly typed.

3) Run and render the result in the terminal.

4) Chat with Gemini (for free).

What do I think?

• Work well for quick prototyping. No worry about messing up the Dev environment on your laptop.
• Doesn't take up disk space, and integrates seamlessly with the code repository of your choice.
• You can code anywhere, even on a tablet.
• Google doesn't specify the resource assigned to a project, not sure if it runs heavy projects smoothly.
• You will always need an active internet though. And you might run into issues like this and might lose your progress.