The end goal is to move the IDE and all development tooling to the cloud (similar to what GitHub Codespaces is trying to do). All editor defaults, build tools, linting, environment best practices, etc will be provided for you without all the ceremony of setting it up. This will make it easier for new team members to be productive from day 1 and it will allow you to have multiple development environments for each branch of work.
The realization is that if you control the development environment, by introducing seamless integrations with your hosting through things like easy-to-use databases (i.e. vendor lock-in), you also have control over the hosting of applications. That's a pretty lucrative business as we've seen with AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.
Also, there's a trend towards low code/no code, so everything is becoming tiny microservices integrated with other SaaS solutions. Something like Repl.it can help you with the "last mile" of development work when you need build something lightweight and quick.
The realization is that if you control the development environment, by introducing seamless integrations with your hosting through things like easy-to-use databases (i.e. vendor lock-in), you also have control over the hosting of applications. That's a pretty lucrative business as we've seen with AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.
Also, there's a trend towards low code/no code, so everything is becoming tiny microservices integrated with other SaaS solutions. Something like Repl.it can help you with the "last mile" of development work when you need build something lightweight and quick.