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CodePen VS ACE (Ajax Code Editor)

Compare CodePen VS ACE (Ajax Code Editor) and see what are their differences

CodePen logo CodePen

A front end web development playground.

ACE (Ajax Code Editor) logo ACE (Ajax Code Editor)

Focused and built towards coders, web designers, and web builders, ACE (Ajax Code Editor) can help...
  • CodePen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • ACE (Ajax Code Editor) Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-05

CodePen features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Developers can collaborate with others in real-time, making it easy to work on projects with teammates or seek help from the community.
  • Immediate Visual Feedback
    CodePen allows you to see the results of your code as you write it, which is highly beneficial for learning and debugging.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
    CodePen provides a comfortable and feature-rich online IDE environment with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and more.
  • Community-Driven
    Users can share their work with the CodePen community, receive feedback, and explore a wide range of projects created by others.
  • Extensive Resources
    CodePen offers a wealth of examples and templates for various web development tasks, making it a useful resource for learning and inspiration.
  • Cross-Device Accessibility
    Being an online platform, CodePen can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it convenient for developers on the move.

Possible disadvantages of CodePen

  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Since CodePen is primarily an online tool, it requires an internet connection for most of its features to work, limiting its usefulness in offline environments.
  • Performance Constraints
    Complex or resource-intensive projects may not perform as well on CodePen as they would in a full-fledged local development environment.
  • Subscription Costs
    While many features are free, advanced functionalities and additional storage options require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all users.
  • Limited Backend Capabilities
    CodePen is primarily designed for front-end development, so it offers limited support for backend technologies, making it less suitable for full-stack or server-side development.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and libraries can be cumbersome compared to local development environments which have better tools for this purpose, like npm.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing projects with the public can expose your code and assets to unauthorized use, posing potential intellectual property and security risks.

ACE (Ajax Code Editor) features and specs

  • Rich Feature Set
    ACE provides syntax highlighting, line numbers, code folding, autocompletion, and more, making it quite powerful for web-based coding.
  • Customizability
    Users can extend and customize ACE by adding themes, changing the key bindings, and altering other settings to fit their workflow.
  • Wide Language Support
    ACE supports syntax highlighting for numerous programming languages, enabling developers to work with varied code bases within the same editor.
  • In-Browser Operation
    Being a web-based code editor, ACE can be used directly in the browser without any need for installation or configuration, providing immediate access across devices.
  • Open Source
    As an open-source project, ACE allows developers to contribute to the codebase, ensure transparency, and avoid vendor lock-in.

Possible disadvantages of ACE (Ajax Code Editor)

  • Performance Limitations
    Being a JavaScript-based editor running in the browser, ACE may experience performance issues when handling particularly large files compared to native desktop editors.
  • Lack of Advanced IDE Features
    ACE is mainly a code editor and does not provide some of the advanced features found in full-fledged IDEs, such as built-in debugging tools or integrated terminal support.
  • Limited Offline Use
    Since ACE is designed for web-based environments, there might be limitations or additional steps required to use it effectively offline.
  • Dependency on Browser
    The performance and capability of ACE can vary depending on the browser being used, making it subject to each browser's limitations and quirks.
  • Learning Curve
    Setting up custom configurations and understanding the full range of features may require a learning period, especially for users new to web-based editors.

CodePen videos

What Is Codepen?

More videos:

  • Review - Learn to use CodePen from a co-founder of CodePen
  • Review - Using CodePen For Inspiration & Learning

ACE (Ajax Code Editor) videos

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CodePen and ACE (Ajax Code Editor))
Text Editors
96 96%
4% 4
Programming
100 100%
0% 0
Web Development Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Software Development
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CodePen and ACE (Ajax Code Editor)

CodePen Reviews

Best Forums for Developers to Join in 2025
Codepen is a social network for developers to show off their work, ask and answer questions, and exchange ideas. It's like a Reddit for coding and design, with a large community of talented web developers.
Source: www.notchup.com
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
Codepen is a social development environment that allows developers to showcase their work and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a collaborative space. Codepen’s focus on visual and interactive development makes it an excellent community for front-end developers and designers.
Source: www.qodo.ai
8 Best Replit Alternatives & Competitors in 2022 (Free & Paid) - Software Discover
Codepen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases to learn.
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
Probably the most popular online code editor. CodePen is fast, easy to use, and allows a web developer to write and share HTML/CSS/JS code online.
Source: techarge.in
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
CodePen is a cool online IDE that allows you to write code in your browser and see the result just as you build it. CodePen challenges is a place for leveling up your skills by building things. Each week, new challenges appear for you to tackle, and the best “Pens” get picked.

ACE (Ajax Code Editor) Reviews

We have no reviews of ACE (Ajax Code Editor) yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CodePen seems to be a lot more popular than ACE (Ajax Code Editor). While we know about 502 links to CodePen, we've tracked only 17 mentions of ACE (Ajax Code Editor). We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CodePen mentions (502)

View more

ACE (Ajax Code Editor) mentions (17)

  • AI-Powered Frontend UI Components Generator (Next.js, GPT4, Langchain, & CopilotKit)
    Ace Code Editor - an embeddable code editor written in JavaScript that matches the features and performance of native editors. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Show HN: A note-keeping system on top of Fossil SCM
    I used a note system built on top of Fossil as my primary system for quite a while. Here are the details in case anyone is interested. Fossil allows CGI extensions[1]. There's a database for tickets, but that's just a regular SQLite table that you can use to store anything you want, and it's version controlled and queryable. I stored the notes plus metadata in the tickets database. The CGI returned HTML with the... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Writing a (simple) code editor for the web?
    Hey there! Thanks for reaching out. Writing a code editor with syntax highlighting in a browser can be a little tricky, but it's definitely doable. One resource that might be helpful is the Ace Editor library (https://ace.c9.io/). It's a lightweight but powerful editor that includes syntax highlighting for a huge range of languages. You could also check out CodeMirror (https://codemirror.net/), which is another... Source: about 2 years ago
  • The ShnooTalk programming language
    The frontend uses the ace editor for syntax highlighting and then sends all the "text" you have typed to a python backend. The backend then writes all the text to a temporary directory and calls the compiler using subprocess (something similar to os.system). Source: over 2 years ago
  • MDSlides - Simple markdown presentation tool
    It is built using Reveal.js and Ace, and is a simple markdown presentation tool right in the browser. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CodePen and ACE (Ajax Code Editor), you can also consider the following products

JSFiddle - Test your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor.

CodeMirror - CodeMirror is a versatile text editor implemented in JavaScript for the browser.

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

Emscripten - Emscripten is an LLVM to JavaScript compiler.

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

Monaco Editor - A browser based code editor