I'm new to the world of coding and have found a great pleasure in it and would greatly enjoy pursuing it. My problem is 2 fold. 1st I work from many different devises ranging from Windows 8 Desktop, repurposed Linux laptop, and a Chromebook so starting on a project and being restrained to that one machine is a pain. 2nd I don't have a ton of money to invest in paying for Nitrous.io which I have found to be the exact solution that I am looking for, the problem being I can only have 1 box at a time otherwise I have to pay. I love the service but I just can't afford it right now.
What I would really like to do is roll my own Nitrous.io. With my student status there are some services such as AWS that I get for free. This is where I would like to host my clone. I've fairly technically savvy, I'm a systems admin by day, but not so savvy (yet) when it comes to coding.
My question is does anyone have any suggestions on where I could start bringing this to fruition? I don't want to launch VM's b/c the lack of power of my Chromebook I just want to launch a virtual workspace exactly like Nitrous.io does has configured. I know you use to be able to clone Cloud9 but the version you can get is fairly outdated. Are there any other IDEs that I could get working like Nitrous?
If you are new to coding, then you will simply not be able to take on a project of this size. Even an advanced programmer would probably not take on a project like this on their own.
Instead, I would encourage you to look at the wealth of free, cross-platform desktop IDE's which are available.
Eclipse IDE is very popular and is actually a framework with extensions to support many languages. It's written in Java, and runs on all major platforms.
Netbeans is similar in some ways in that it's written in Java, it's cross platform, and it supports a lot of languages.
CodeLite looks like a promising alternative if you want something a little lighter weight. It looks like it might have a more similar look and feel to Nitrous.io.
I have known people who use CodeBlocks.
There are a surprising number of free, cross-platform integrated development environments that will do the same job of Nitrous.io but locally. Of course, you will have to sync the machines to work on the same projects across your various machines, but there are also lots of great, free tools for that (Dropbox, for example).
My advice would be to start by installing one at a time and using it for a while until you find one that you like. Your first instinct to want to rewrite Nitrous is understandable, but nearly impossible. A better idea is to try to find an alternative that you can use for free.