I see you make heavy use of Cloud9, glad to see that I'm not the only one using it as a learning sandbox environment. It is truly a great platform, I use it to introduce people to Linux (terminal, editing files, etc.) without the hassle of setting a virtualbox, installing any software in their computers, or risking my machines.
I agree - I especially love that it allows students to bypass many of the headaches of installing the right dependencies (something beginners struggle with for hours or days). Cloud9 let's you get straight to coding.
Not sure if you're into Javascript development, but check out HyperDev.com - it's awesome! It takes things to a whole new level of fast.
I think we have Docker to thank for progress on this front.
I tried it few weeks back and sadly they force you to add credit card to proceed. Few seconds of googling showed people using fake ones to circumvent it. Not really interested in that nor exposing card details.
I'm on the same boat.
I don't feel comfortable sharing CC details for a free service I might be interested to try (even though I won't have much time until next year to do something), and doesn't seem fair "cheating" the system using a fake one.
Oh sorry, I don't have a proper one, just when receiving new interns/researchers. Most of our research tools run on Linux but it is quite easy to destroy valuable data, so a c9 sandbox works wonders :)
