Online Integrated Development Environment (IDE) in Supporting Computer Programming Learning Process during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

COVID-19 has spread to various countries and affected many sectors, including education. New challenges arise in universities with study programs related to computer programming, which require a lot of practice. Difficulties encountered when students should setting up the environment needed to carry out programming practices. Furthermore, they should install a text editor called Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to support it. There is various online IDE that supports computer programming. However, students must have an internet connection to use it. After all, many students cannot afford to buy internet quotas to access online learning material during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to these problems, this study compares several online IDEs based on internet data usage and the necessary supporting libraries' availability. In this study, we only compared eleven online IDEs that support the Python programming language, free to access, and do not require logging in. Based on the comparative analysis, three online IDEs have most libraries supported. They are REPL.IT, CODECHEF, and IDEONE. Based on internet data usage, REPL.IT is an online IDE that requires the least transferred data. Moreover, this online IDE also has a user-friendly interface to place the left and right sides' code and output positions. It prevents the user from scrolling to see the results of the code that has been executed. The absence of advertisements also makes this online IDE a more focused appearance. Therefore, REPL.IT is highly recommended for users who have a limited internet quota, primarily to support the learning phase of computer programming during the COVID-19 pandemic.