[HN Gopher] GitHub Codespaces
___________________________________________________________________
GitHub Codespaces
Author : CraftThatBlock
Score : 1159 points
Date : 2020-05-06 16:26 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| CraftThatBlock wrote:
| I hope they allow to run the VMs on local hardware. I would love
| to use my desktop resources (more than they are offering, which
| is still generous) for this feature.
|
| I think Chromebooks are going to be a great use for this.
| Lightweight client but full editor and environment, with no
| hassle.
| jankeromnes wrote:
| FYI gitpod.io offers 16 CPU / 60 GB RAM, and works great on
| Chromebooks & iPads.
| frank2 wrote:
| >gitpod.io . . . works great on . . . iPads
|
| gitpod.io is tightly integrated with the Monaco editor; is it
| not?
|
| I ask because the top of https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-
| editor/ says, "The Monaco editor is _not_ supported in mobile
| browsers or mobile web frameworks ". Has Microsoft changed
| their policy and simply neglected to change the passage I
| just quoted?
| jankeromnes wrote:
| You're right, Gitpod uses Theia, which uses Monaco, which
| doesn't officially support mobile browsers.
|
| However, we do extensive testing of Gitpod and Theia on
| mobile devices, and work around bugs or contribute fixes
| upstream to Monaco when possible.
|
| Gitpod/Theia users now report that the iPad experience is
| great, and we continue to push forward on improving it.
|
| On the other hand, VS Codespaces blocks you with a "This
| browser is not supported" error page when you're not using
| Chrome. (Even pre-Chromium Edge is unsupported.) But you
| absolutely need Safari support to work on iPad (all
| browsers there are basically just Safari skins).
| frank2 wrote:
| >I think Chromebooks are going to be a great use for this.
|
| A great use for this if you don't mind losing the ability to
| run Ublock Origin and similar extensions when Google "upgrades"
| the software on the Chromebook to extension manifest V3.
|
| That is relevant because most developers probably need to look
| stuff up on the web while they are working. Some of us really
| don't like ads.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I'm not sure if you can bring your own machine[1] with GitHub
| Codespaces, but you can with Visual Studio Codespaces, which
| has the same underlying tech/featureset. (Visual Studio
| Codespaces was known as Visual Studio Online until last week)
| it basically does exactly what you want, let's you use your
| dedicated local resources on another machine or remotely via
| the browser or using VS Code proper.
|
| I work at Microsoft on Azure but not with VS Codespaces or with
| GitHub Codespaces -- I'm just a big fan/user/beta tester.
|
| [1]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/bring-your-
| own-m...
| CraftThatBlock wrote:
| Thank you, very interesting! I use IntelliJ mostly, and this
| is something I wish was available on that platform
| dijit wrote:
| Oh, WOW! I was looking for something just like this recently.
|
| I tried setting up Theia (https://theia-ide.org) on windows and
| it was definitely not ready for major use.
|
| I didn't find anything else that fit the bill either, I hear
| something like this exists internally at google though.
|
| I'm not typically a huge fan of Github (I'm sure that's a
| controversial opinion) but this is definitely something I'm going
| to check out.
| jankeromnes wrote:
| You've probably seen https://gitpod.io then, which is kind of a
| hosted Theia that seems to work well in any browser/OS/device?
| pedalpete wrote:
| My hope and suspicion is this will have a significant impact on
| the number of improvements to open-source projects and
| particularly little things like js components.
|
| Just in the last few days, I've come across a few very minor
| bugs, with a one-line fix. In order to make that change, I
| currently need to fork the repo, download it, make the change
| (turn off my prettier or adapt to the repo's) then make the PR.
|
| I'm hoping with this I can just make a PR in the owner's package.
| It's the difference between a 10 minute commit and a 1 minute
| change.
| xendipity wrote:
| Ah, this really makes sense with all of the recent work they've
| done on VSCode's remote development capabilities.
|
| - An early announcement on their focus:
| https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2019/05/02/remote-develo...
|
| - Most (all?) of their recent VSCode updates include improvements
| to remote development. i.e.:
| https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_44#_remote-developm...
|
| - Facebook partnering and becoming an early, heavy adopter:
| https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2019/11/19/faceboo...
| ivalm wrote:
| Their remote development capability is amazing and was quite a
| game changer for me. Having a nice ide where all of the plugins
| work on a remote server as if everything is local is so nice!
| plexicle wrote:
| The SSH plugin is insanely good. I can dev from a Windows
| machine and SSH into my Mac and do React Native (native) iOS
| modules. Even my zsh shell acts as if it's local. Running
| `pod install` from Windows. It's seemless.
| cbhl wrote:
| +1 to this. $DAYJOB has some proprietary ssh handling, but
| I can dev from my work-issued macbook into a Linux desktop
| in the office and vscode "just works"
| dastbe wrote:
| remote dev (and I guess now codespaces) is one of those
| "clear differentiators" that is actually getting me to move
| away from intellij and friends.
| rubber_duck wrote:
| I wish IntelliJ moves in this direction so bad - would
| gladly pay more for this. I tried switching to VS Code for
| my current project yesterday and it's the best VS Code
| scenario out of my projects - backend RoR frontend
| React/TS. TypeScript aspect is amazing but the Rails part
| is nowhere close to RubyMine.
|
| .NET (Core) was inferior to any IDE (even Xamarin ones)
| last time I tried it (~6 months back). IntelliJ Rider has
| been quite an amazing discovery in this regard - I prefer
| it to Visual Studio.
|
| And then there are things like mobile development which VS
| Code has realistically no chance of touching.
|
| Any language I can think of other than TypeScript - VSCode
| just cannot come close to IntelliJ support. I would pay for
| the ability to have a desktop machine on which I could SSH
| develop from say a Windows tablet/2in1 with integrated 4G
| and hardware powerful enough to run the client editor +
| productivity apps and has portability + battery life (say
| some intel low power series + 8GB ram)
| Aeolun wrote:
| I agree. I'd love remote intellij development, but it
| doesn't seem to be something they're interested in at
| all.
| lawik wrote:
| So nice when it works and has been breaking incredibly badly
| for me recently. The Python extensions that vscode was trying
| to bring up whenever I connected to my remote had some weird
| interaction with a virtualenv and just pinned the server to
| 100% CPU and rendered it completely unresponsive. Repeatedly.
| Reboot to recover.
|
| Generally extremely good, but for obvious reasons this makes
| me think twice about connecting to some things.
| zimmund wrote:
| How does it work with poor or slow internet connection?
| sudhirj wrote:
| Should be fine - most editors will not round trip on every
| key press, only periodic saves or command runs.
| 3PS wrote:
| In my experience, pretty well. If the internet cuts out
| temporarily, it reconnects automatically without losing any
| of your work.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's actually impressive how often VS code or ssh has
| exploded for some reason without losing any work.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Is there a way yet for me to run a server on Windows, and be
| able to code anywhere from my web browser? I basically want
| code-server that works on Windows.
|
| https://github.com/cdr/code-server
| nhooyr wrote:
| Coming soon :)
| [deleted]
| WorldMaker wrote:
| You can register your own machines with Visual Studio
| Codespaces:
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/bring-your-
| own-m...
|
| It's not entirely self-hosted, but it's an interesting hybrid
| middle-ground.
| realharo wrote:
| The WSL integration is a pretty good result of that effort too.
| thwarted wrote:
| I wish the vscode remote dev functionality didn't require a
| binary server/remote side component. I have a bunch of users
| who want to use it, but it's not compatible with the system
| libraries on our servers and dev environments.
| soVeryTired wrote:
| Are you sure it needs a remote component? The remote SSH dev
| experience is actually pretty good in python.
| thwarted wrote:
| Quite sure. Here's the documentation.
|
| https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/remote-overview
|
| It seems like it runs all the functionality on the remote
| end, and the vscode instance you're running on the machine
| in front of you is just the GUI. To install this, you need
| ssh access, and then it drops some binaries on the remote
| system and uses ssh to start them up -- so it looks to a
| layman trying to get this working that "it only needs ssh",
| but that's just for the install stage. These binaries only
| work with more recent releases of glibc.
|
| You know what's interesting about some of the features
| listed on that page:
|
| - Develop on the same operating system you deploy to or use
| larger or more specialized hardware.
|
| - Sandbox your development environment to avoid impacting
| your local machine configuration.
|
| - Make it easy for new contributors to get started and keep
| everyone on a consistent environment.
|
| - Use tools or runtimes not available on your local OS or
| manage multiple versions of them.
|
| - Access an existing development environment from multiple
| machines or locations.
|
| We have all those already with the way our development
| environments are setup, but the reason people want to use
| vscode is for the editor, no one asks about the above
| things.
| aryamaan wrote:
| Didn't we already solve this problem with containers?
| jabits wrote:
| You should read the article...nothing to do with
| containers...
| mbreese wrote:
| The article has a lot to do with containers. When you
| spin up a code space, you get a containerized workspace
| for the current repository.
|
| > _Codespaces sets up a cloud-hosted, containerized, and
| customizable VS Code environment. After set up, you can
| connect to a codespace through the browser or through VS
| Code._
|
| (But that wasn't what the parent was referring to...)
| IAmLiterallyAB wrote:
| I believe he was referring to the system libraries being
| outdated problem
| sneak wrote:
| There are perpetual reminders all around that Microsoft's
| only pretending to like f/oss because that's where the
| developer attention (and thus corporate money) is. There's
| spyware in all of their open source apps (TypeScript
| excluded, because they couldn't get away with it there) that
| you can of course patch out, but you can't get it removed
| from the project because, free software or not, Microsoft
| gets to decide what goes in or out.
|
| Bet you a dollar the GitHub mobile app that's going to come
| out pretty soon will also be totally proprietary with no
| source provided. It's a growing trend in developer tooling:
| even Docker's desktop versions (not Microsoft's fault, but
| still) are not even open source (much less free software).
|
| It's going to be really sad in a few years when Microsoft
| starts turning the screws to extract more revenue from this
| free software ecosystem (GitHub/npm) that they are coming to
| exert major control over.
|
| Soon, the most common "industry standard" tooling for the
| largest and most popular software development ecosystem
| (javascript) will rely heavily on proprietary software that
| spies on you continuously while you use it, just like
| Windows.
| oefrha wrote:
| > Bet you a dollar the GitHub mobile app that's going to
| come out pretty soon will also be totally proprietary with
| no source provided.
|
| Stable version already came out a while ago, been using it
| on my phone. Also, GitHub the website has never been open
| source and they never pretended it was or was going to be,
| so no one was holding breath for source code of the mobile
| app.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I mean, they could have totally released the source and
| it probably wouldn't impact their bottom line at all.
| jon-wood wrote:
| It would make quite a dent in support contracts for their
| on-prem offering.
| snazz wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it wouldn't. The mobile app isn't
| something that requires a ton of support anyway. What
| good would the source code do you in this case?
| jannes wrote:
| I think jon-wood was talking about the website's source
| code, not the mobile app.
| meysholdt wrote:
| The view of the Eclipse Foundation onto VS Code may be
| interesting here: https://blogs.eclipse.org/post/mike-
| milinkovich/theia-open-s...
| knodi123 wrote:
| whoa, slick.
| kick wrote:
| GitHub has always been a proprietary company unconcerned
| with user freedom.
|
| They actually have a whitepaper that predates acquisition
| on exactly this:
|
| https://resources.github.com/whitepapers/introduction-to-
| inn...
|
| The company has always been unethical; Microsoft didn't
| change that.
| PanosJee wrote:
| Wait for radicle.xyz
| yarrel wrote:
| Those of you downvoting this - can you explain what you
| disagree with here?
|
| Because it looks like a good analysis of this part of
| Microsoft's strategy to turn "Open Source" into a spyware-
| laden sausage machine for Azure.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I think the downvotes are because Microsoft has been
| providing some amazing tools completely free of charge.
| If that helps them sell more Azure... great! Everyone
| wins, except GitLab and AWS.
|
| Calling it spyware is hyperbolic.
|
| Keep it up Microsoft.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| Microsoft has been adopting standards to then extend them
| and lock-in users for two decades.
|
| > Microsoft has been providing some amazing tools
| completely free of charge
|
| Yes, and they are the opposite of a no-profit.
|
| This are just the first steps: "embrace" and "extend".
| sneak wrote:
| Not at all. There are no objective criteria to define
| spyware that do not also apply to Windows or VS Code (and
| probably the GitHub mobile app, but I have not yet
| confirmed that).
| carapace wrote:
| Yeah, this.
|
| The analogy seems clear to me: The web _is to_ IE _as_ git
| _is to_ VSCode, eh?
|
| At the very least, it makes it harder for an editor to be a
| competitor to VSCode w/o integrating with GitHub (not just
| git) now, eh?
| cema wrote:
| Not really. At least: the web happened well before IE was
| introduced as an answer. In contrast, VS Code was
| invented much later than git which at the time was an
| established technology and in some ways a standard.
| zerkten wrote:
| The other context here is that IE was a competitive
| browser in its time: 1998-2001. The problem is that it
| won and then languished. IE had a lot of sway over how
| developers built things as the market share grew. Then it
| locked in users in various ways which starved the other
| competitors.
|
| It took until Phoenix (now Firefox), for there to be
| something better that grabbed the attention of developers
| and those sick of being stuck with IE. It became Firefox
| and Mozilla hatched a pretty effective plan to steal
| market share. For all of Mozilla's recent failings, we
| forget (or weren't around to remember) the success of
| Firefox was pretty impressive as it was a grassroots
| effort.
| _jal wrote:
| Reminds me of a job in a past life I was quite happy to
| leave. It seemed like all I did was clean up low-end websites
| compromised through Frontpage extensions.
|
| That was a year I'll never get back, but I do highly
| recommend the fun of leaving _vti_bin/ directories laying
| around with funny-behaving things in them. Every few months I
| still see evidence in my personal site logs of a script
| kiddie slowly becoming enraged as they figure out I left them
| a busy box to play with.
| mkchoi212 wrote:
| What languages does this support? It would be super cool if this
| supports `xcodebuild` :O
| jedieaston wrote:
| They have Mac runners for GitHub actions, so maybe they could
| (although you'd have to pay a steep price since it's hard to
| virtualize OS X).
| JoyrexJ9 wrote:
| Any language you can run in a Linux container, so not XCode,
| because Apple
| mkchoi212 wrote:
| ahh shucks :( But this means it will support Swift so yay??
| mcolyer wrote:
| We support all languages that can run within a Linux container,
| see https://github.com/mcolyer/codespace-
| containers/blob/master/... for a base example image (I work as
| the product lead on this).
| pgroves wrote:
| Well then I'm glad you're here...Is it possible to integrate
| with an existing Dockerfile? My team's main build is handled
| by an image that is a result of years of fine-tuning and
| files with external dependency definitions (like
| requirements.txt for pip). Getting all of that installed in
| github's container is only slightly easier than getting it
| all installed in a desktop IDE, which is currently
| prohibitively difficult for us. We don't want to end up with
| a second platform we have to maintain.
|
| More generally, is there going to be a clean way to to use
| this if we already have a containerized stack, especially
| editing code in a user's existing container? (With the code
| still under version control, of course)
| mkchoi212 wrote:
| Awesome! Seems like it's very capable even from launch.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Does this work on iPad?
|
| I was under the impression this bug is blocking VSCode and other
| electron based apps.
|
| https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=149054
| jankeromnes wrote:
| Monaco has a few rough edges on iPad, but overall it seems to
| work great with https://gitpod.io (same editor as VSCode).
| robenkleene wrote:
| According to that bug, this issue has been resolved.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| So much Github marketing spam today, maybe the admins should look
| into whether they are sending out coordinated upvote instructions
| to employees?
| throwaway7281 wrote:
| I'm getting tired of this game. Even the deaf ones like me start
| to hear the drums now.
|
| You know, it's not that we do not have enough megacorps
| controlling every aspect of our lives. We need more of the
| "opposite" - places that empower you _and_ leave you in peace and
| control.
| Signez wrote:
| Having some thought about the GitPod folks[0] that provide nearly
| the same feature set.
|
| I hope we are not witnessing a big sherlocking being done here,
| but... it really looks like one. :/
|
| [0] https://www.gitpod.io/
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| They should be OK because they're still usable with GitLab and
| have a self-hosted offering.
| marceloabsousa wrote:
| Yes, I think it is... Gitpod still has gitlab though :)
|
| It's quite crazy what GitHub is doing...
| taywrobel wrote:
| They already have a blog post up about it -
| https://www.gitpod.io/blog/github-codespaces/
| jankeromnes wrote:
| We're pretty stoked to have new friends in cloud-native
| development!
|
| Microsoft/GitHub joining the dev-environment-as-code movement
| is huge, will likely save us all a few more years of
| dependency-hell.
|
| (EDIT: Removed official blog post link because taywrobel posted
| it first)
| mikewhy wrote:
| Hopefully one day we can get over "sherlocking". When you build
| your business off of another business, you're still at the
| mercy of the other business.
| wishinghand wrote:
| I develop front ends for Laravel apps. The database is also on my
| desktop. With this would I need to host the database on its own
| server or can the Codespace also handle running a DB? Mainly
| asking because I only use laptops for co-working and meetups.
| Would love to ditch buying them and just use the iPad Pro that I
| have. Not sure how to handle the database if I'm on an iPad.
| ianwalter wrote:
| I was just looking in to setting up "VS Code in the browser" with
| gitpod, code-server, and Visual Studio Codespaces last weekend.
| Gitpod looked nice but the fact that you can only customize the
| editor per-repository doesn't make sense to me. Looks like GitHub
| has solved this by using a `dotfiles` repo. code-server looked
| decent but I would much rather auth / secure the editor through
| GitHub. I tried to use Visual Studio Codespaces but I find
| Microsoft's account system and Azure's interface so infuriating.
| I'm really looking forward to this!
| jankeromnes wrote:
| > Gitpod looked nice but the fact that you can only customize
| the editor per-repository doesn't make sense to me.
|
| Gitpod also has user-specific Preferences, and even user-
| specific VS Code extensions. (Usually customization places have
| a "Workspace" tab and a "User" tab.)
| ianwalter wrote:
| I just added my user settings and my custom theme via .vsix
| and everything seems to have worked fine. Not sure how I
| missed this, thanks Jan!
| jankeromnes wrote:
| Hey, that's awesome! Thanks for the update.
| danso wrote:
| I remember listening to Nathan Sobo, one of the founders/creators
| of Atom, talking to The Changelog in 2017 about creating Atom and
| his goal/dream to make it a collaborative editor, i.e. Google
| Docs for code [0]. He didn't have a timeline but he had done
| research into it:
|
| > _That's definitely something I wanna do; that's not really in
| progress yet. I did a bunch of research in that area, so that I
| can't really put a timeline on. I can definitely say that more
| async style traditional GitHub collaboration will be happening
| this year. I think there will be a natural outgrowth from that
| into the real-time stuff._
|
| Don't know if Sobo or his Atom colleagues do anything with the VS
| Code people, but hearing about Codespaces made me immediately
| think about his ideas for cloud editing.
|
| (AFAIK the CodeSpaces presentation didn't mention collaborative
| editing in its current feature set)
|
| [0] https://changelog.com/podcast/241
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| I had a short chat with some members of the VSCode python
| extension team to give feedback on their product. They wanted
| to know how much I'd value collaborative editing in VSCode.
| They're definitely thinking about it.
| eertami wrote:
| >They wanted to know how much I'd value collaborative editing
| in VSCode. They're definitely thinking about it.
|
| Thinking about it? I thought this was a feature since 2018...
|
| https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live-share
| mailtolego wrote:
| If you've noticed it during the demo, the Live Share
| extension is preinstalled and logged in with your GitHub
| account, so you can start a session right away.
| lostinroutine wrote:
| I wonder how they will (did?) work around the keyboard shortcuts
| that Chrome reserves (and doesn't propagate to the page). For
| example, Cmd+T in VSCode opens up the quick search panel, while
| in Chrome it opens a new tab.
| Spicli89 wrote:
| #20880
| scruffups wrote:
| Very nice and much needed.
|
| What worries me is the consolidation of great resources in the
| hands of one party. We know from our collective experience since
| forever that concentration of any resource does not give us
| resilience.
|
| Your thoughts?
| preya2k wrote:
| Interestingly, it seems that Microsoft hast just renamed its
| "Visual Studio Online" (which was basically the same as this new
| product) to "Visual Studio Codespaces". So it seems that they are
| merging these two products. (See:
| https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/visual-studio-co...)
|
| EDIT: They actually announced the renaming of the product a
| couple of days ago: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/30/microsofts-
| visual-studio-o...
| mcolyer wrote:
| Codespaces uses the same underlying technology as Visual Studio
| Codespaces to bring a fully GitHub-native experience to our
| GitHub users. We've been working with multiple teams on the
| Visual Studio side to make this happen (I work as the product
| lead on Codespaces)
| nojvek wrote:
| So I imagine this is similar to codesandbox.io which already
| lets you do frontendy bits?
|
| I imagine the way Code spaces works is you spin up a
| container in azure with checked out GitHub branch, vscode on
| the browser then interfaces with the container(s).
|
| Pretty neat idea if you can customize the docker container
| setup like a simple docker compose file or something.
| twunde wrote:
| Similarly Github Actions is reusing a lot of Azure Pipelines
| under the hood.
|
| One of the most impressive parts about Microsoft's recent
| acquisitions is how quickly essentially two separate
| companies are now sharing code. It's hard enough to get
| different teams/products in the same company to use shared
| code in a meaningful way, and Microsoft has accomplished it
| with a new company.
| op03 wrote:
| All that is nice. But who are they building this for? Who
| is asking for this stuff?
| aHorseNamedSeve wrote:
| I would love to have this stuff in theory but in
| practice, it hasn't worked for me.
|
| I'm responsible for about 15 different Rails apps. These
| apps were built over the last 8 years and many have some
| nasty dependencies that make setting up a dev environment
| for them a pain. Or running tests a pain or whatever.
|
| So many no one has touched in years but then some bug
| needs to be addressed in them. Today I have to get the
| app running again on my machine and there's always some
| silly timesink that makes the trivial change take too
| long.
|
| For me ideally, I'd have two docker style images, one
| production, one test/development that just adds the dev
| resources to the production image. And then I could jump
| into any editor and see the changes live online without
| even installing docker on my machine.
|
| Having a full dev system online means I can make changes
| from my phone, or really any internet connected device.
|
| At this point, I don't have any interest in using such a
| system for my day to day work. But for my oddball stuff a
| well designed one would be great.
| twunde wrote:
| For Github Actions, the product launch has been a major
| success and has become a new monetizable product.
| Anecdotally, I've heard of some companies moving their
| Jenkins/Circle CI/Travis CI workflows over to it, better
| proof is the sheer number of Github Actions that are now
| easy to install. This also allows Github to compete
| directly with Bitbucket and Bitbucket pipelines.
|
| If your question is about who is asking for Github
| Codespaces, I'm not totally sure. Personally, for small
| changes it would be nice to be able to edit directly in
| Github but I certainly wouldn't pay for it. I imagine
| that core why behind this product release (besides the
| fact that most of this functionality was already pre-
| built and easy to reuse) is that it improves the user
| experience for anyone working from their chromeOS device,
| tablet and phone improving brand loyalty and capturing
| new users, especially students who may only have chromeOS
| devices.
| dotancohen wrote:
| So I suppose that you would like a faster horse?
| op03 wrote:
| When someone builds something and doesn't actually
| mention why, its not unreasonable to ask what the
| motivation was...
| zerkten wrote:
| Have you asked them? You can hit up pretty much anyone
| these days on Twitter and they'll respond, if the
| question is reasonable. You make it sound like someone
| owes you a response.
|
| If this is about GitHub Actions specifically there is
| quite a bit of info at
| https://github.blog/2019-08-08-github-actions-now-
| supports-c.... My takeaway is that it's about packaging
| up Azure Pipelines in a way that GitHub users understand
| and complements other features. There are more jarring
| ways to integrate the products.
| [deleted]
| xpe wrote:
| > You make it sound like someone owes you a response.
|
| I didn't interpret the comment that way.
|
| BTW, I'm not saying your interpretation is "not true" or
| "crazy" or anything like that. I just think it is better
| to keep this kind of (bad faith) interpretation private.
| I think it is useful to remember this HN guideline
| "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith." [1]
|
| The benefit, which is not spelled out there, is that if
| more of us do this, there will be fewer amplifications /
| chain-reactions of misinterpretations. This results in a
| more useful discussion.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dkarlovi wrote:
| Having APIs designed for public consumption probably
| helped.
| luhn wrote:
| This is going to be great for open source--Being able to get a
| fully-configured dev environment at a click of a button greatly
| lowers the barrier to entry. I've had a few small OS
| contributions where the time to set up the environment was more
| than the time I spent programming!
|
| I could also see this being popular with engineering teams. No
| futzing with the new hire's computer, just have them open a web
| browser and they can dive right in!
| ksec wrote:
| Yes, and ( Sadly ) No. I have seen quite a few open source
| project that refuse to host on Github due to its lock in,
| proprietary nature.
|
| Personally I have no problem with Github, as its advantage far
| outweigh its disadvantage.
| suyash wrote:
| Most developers are pissed at programming on the cloud and want
| to do core development locally on their laptops, if you will
| force them to cloud edits that good luck getting developers to
| work with you.
| marceloabsousa wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is really true. Why would you want to
| become a contributor to an OSS project if you can't bother to
| get it working on your machine? You actually learn quite a bit
| about the project by going through its dependency hell.
| petetnt wrote:
| I contribute to various OSS (and private) projects all time
| just by using the GitHub code editor and catching errors or
| regressions if any in the CI. Having a fully fledged dev
| environment is even better.
| marceloabsousa wrote:
| This is pretty cool. Can you share a bit more about your
| experience? I would like to be able to help out this way.
| petetnt wrote:
| Basically it's just the same as whipping out a simple
| text editor in hurry; if I need to modify multiple files,
| I just do multiple commits (do a change -> commit -> jump
| to my branch/fork -> do the rest of the changes one by
| one) as GitHub doesn't support editing multiple files for
| a single commit and then I wait for the CI results. If
| something goes awry I'll probably clone the repo at that
| point.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Most of the time when I contribute to a GH project it works
| like this: I use the product, discover a bug, search on their
| GH, don't find it, file a new bug report, clone the source
| fix the bug, submit PR, never commit to the same project
| again.
|
| The threshold for doing that sort of minor work can be
| lowered _a lot_ by this.
| aerovistae wrote:
| Idk, I feel like we've been trained to believe this is
| necessary. Why you should need to know more about a
| dependency than its documented API? This sort of reminds me
| of Americans believing their current healthcare situation is
| the only way to do it even though it's awful.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Sometimes setup on different platforms is different in very
| subtle and hard to debug ways, and for smaller OSS projects
| that haven't yet been tested on different platforms, it may
| be very hard to figure that out. Now you can develop even
| on a chromebook (without the terminal access) without
| having to deal with any of that.
| marceloabsousa wrote:
| Don't get me wrong - I don't think that you should go
| through it every time. Also, I'm not sure anyone reads the
| documented API of a dependency until some unexpected
| behaviour is happening. My basic point is that the
| dependency hell is not the biggest barrier for an open
| source contribution. In fact, mixing both problems is a bit
| strange to me - codespaces is not going to magically solve
| the dependency hell - it's just going to shift it to some
| other part of the configuration. The best way to start
| contributing to an OSS project is really be to have a
| mentor in project who could guide you through it during
| your first contribution. Personally, I'm willing to fight
| the machine for a couple of hours/days to get something to
| compile -- however, it's hard to justify reading code for
| weeks in the hope I can tackle an open issue.
| cachestash wrote:
| The only time I could see myself using this is in the
| following scenario;
|
| 1. Browsing repos.
|
| 2. See a quick fix I could make (like a typo)
|
| 3. Open up the code space view, make the change, add and
| commit it.
|
| For my daily needs I would never replace an online IDE with
| my local IDE. I see no value in doing that. My concern would
| be for when github has a service outage. I am without my IDE
| until they resolve the issue? With a local IDE I can just
| continue to work on my branch and push it when GH comes back
| online.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| > The only time I could see myself using this is in the
| following scenario
|
| You can already do this. There's an edit button when you
| view any file and a streamlined process for turning your
| change into a PR. I don't think Codespaces will make this
| any faster. Maybe you can fix slightly less trivial things
| due to the IDE support but on the level you described no
| new capabilities are added.
| radus wrote:
| I think with the same editor experience as I use on my
| own machine, I can fix substantially more complicated
| issues, with significantly less effort.
| seph-reed wrote:
| I'd like to be able to contribute to Firefox or Brave, but
| there's no way I'm going through with the setup.
|
| If I could just do some small stuff, maybe write some unit
| tests, that would be fine.
| marceloabsousa wrote:
| If going through the setup is hell, what makes you believe
| that it'll be easier to contribute after you get it for
| free? I still believe the best way is for OSS projects to
| ask contributors to do some mentoring...
| seph-reed wrote:
| > what makes you believe that it'll be easier to
| contribute after you get it [setup] for free
|
| I'm flabbergasted. Like.. I don't even know where to
| start. You've been through an on-boarding process before
| right? Have you led one? Haven't you ever watched a
| junior dev get dragged through all sorts of arbitrary
| "don't breathe on it" setups just so they can start
| making tiny isolated bug fixes?
|
| And even then, you're just following instructions where
| even most high level developers don't even know why their
| project is set up the way it is.
|
| We've worked on very, very, very different projects your
| and I.
| marceloabsousa wrote:
| I don't understand what your comment have to do with
| contributing to OSS. Anyway, I don't really believe that
| codespaces or any out of the box tool is going to be a
| magical solution for junior devs not be dragged in those
| kind of setups in the projects that you're referring to.
| seph-reed wrote:
| > magical solution for junior devs not be dragged in
| those kind of setups in the projects that you're
| referring to
|
| That's exactly what this is. The setup is part of a
| clonable environment. So for large scale compiled
| projects, you wouldn't have to:
|
| 1. Download the massive thing 2. Get it to compile 3.
| Potentially not have to compile many files that already
| have their `*.o` (or equivalent) file in the environment.
|
| It could be like just walking up to some other developers
| fully functioning station, and getting started.
| arodyginc wrote:
| From my experience (in the UK) companies either don't care
| about your environment assuming you set it up, or they just
| give you a preconfigured laptop (or workstation)
| qppo wrote:
| I've spent the last two weeks working on provisioning scripts
| to make that possible for enterprise products. It's hell.
| skratlo wrote:
| Would you like fries with that sir?
| luizfelberti wrote:
| This is great news! I've been doing a similar setup to this for
| years with Jupyter Notebooks.
|
| However, if I get to make a teeny tiny feature request (Nat, if
| you're out there...) it would be about this:
|
| > _What if I don't want to develop in a browser?_
|
| > If you prefer, you can open a codespace in GitHub and then
| connect to it in VS Code.
|
| I really kinda wish I could do the oposite, kinda like how Google
| Drive's Colaboratory (essentially Jupyter Notebooks on Drive[0])
| do: I would launch a CodeSpace on GitHub, and it would handle all
| of the UI and automation bits, but I would keep the "environment"
| hosted somewhere else (i.e. a Docker container exposing a
| CodeSpace agent/headless VSCode through localhost:8080 that my
| browser talks to)
|
| All of the gears seem to be already in-place for this to be
| possible given:
|
| > _How is Codespaces different from VS Code?_
|
| > Codespaces sets up a cloud-hosted, containerized, and
| customizable VS Code environment. After set up, you can connect
| to a codespace through the browser or through VS Code.
|
| The reasons for this are several:
|
| - I bought a beefy computer for a reason, and want to use it. I
| don't want to pay boatloads of money to Azure to have equal
| firepower to what I currently have idling;
|
| - From an SRE perspective, your code, several times needs to be
| "inside" your infrastructure to run properly (because of roles,
| latency, you might be running Data Loss Prevention solutions,
| what have you), and this allows me to point the CodeSpace to a
| dedicated instance I have running inside a VPN on my own
| infrastructure;
|
| - There are more, but I don't want to make this too long and I'm
| failing to recall some of them.
|
| _So to sum it up:_ I think this is a potentially great feature,
| as long as it doesn 't come coupled with the need to buy Azure
| instance time. This would (and I'm asserting this purely from my
| own gut, without a shred of evidence) probably lead to increased
| adoption for this feature, and as a corollary lead to selling
| more Azure instance time for those who do not want the hassle,
| without crippling those who actually need to keep some things
| "in-house".
|
| [0] https://colab.research.google.com
| gravypod wrote:
| I hope this accelerates interest around web-based development
| environments. If someone could pre-package a setup containing
| language servers for "all" languages, a build system that is
| generic to all languages (bazel or bazel-like), and internally
| run a small kube cluster with a wildcard DNS name pointing to it
| you'd reduce ops work of setting up staging environments, feature
| branch testing, development environment management, etc for most
| development teams by at least 10%.
|
| I can't wait for a monorepo-friendly staging/development
| environment that works out of the box and can provide cross-
| language & generated code autocompletions for "every" language.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| I think you severely underestimate how hard it is to do this
| for "all" and "every" language. Even VSC only has first class
| support for a handful of top languages. Most languages I use
| have barely more then a syntax highlighting package.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| This is great, I can't help but feel like the whole point of
| rewriting a part of VS in JS was to get to this stage.
| revskill wrote:
| It's interesting that Microsoft acknowledges the fact that their
| native windows platform is really not good for a lot of
| developer. Linux is better. The web is even better. Good
| direction they're heading to.
| lucis wrote:
| WSL 2 is really good: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/wsl/wsl2-install
| rurban wrote:
| I have no idea about VS Code. For which languages is this good
| for? Javascript I guess. What else? C, C++, Java, python or such?
| albertzeyer wrote:
| I still wish that PyCharm has some better remote development
| support... Basically this feature request:
| https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-226455
|
| The VS Code remote development is already much better now, and
| only seems to get improved and extended more and more.
|
| And then, going further, some online web version of PyCharm...
| deegles wrote:
| I couldn't find any info on how much memory/vCPU these will have
| available or if it's configurable, does anyone know?
| [deleted]
| avanderhoorn wrote:
| 2 core, 4GB ram... can't config atm.
| JoyrexJ9 wrote:
| I think it's 2 cores, 4 GB RAM by default but they are planning
| of adding other options I expect it'll be in line with the VS
| Codespaces offerings https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
| gb/pricing/details/visual-stu...
| matthewisabel wrote:
| Hey I'm a Codespaces PM. It's 2 cores 4GB right now but there
| will be more configurations coming soon as get further along in
| the beta.
| xd1936 wrote:
| People hate on Electron apps, but it sure enables some cool
| stuff. I can't imagine another sustainable way to build a fully-
| fledged IDE that runs as a desktop application that people love,
| _and_ can be run on a remote server instance, rendered and
| interacted with in the browser. Amazing.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| VSCode is a decent app, but I no longer consider it an electron
| app. It uses tons of c++ and you'd have to have the cash to buy
| the electron team (like ms did) to get anywhere close to what
| they have done.
| abhinavk wrote:
| Care to elaborate about the _tons of C++_ part? In their
| GitHub repo, I can hardly see any C++ files.
| airstrike wrote:
| > Get the _full_ Visual Studio Code experience without leaving
| GitHub.
|
| I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that statement isn't
| quite accurate.
| JoyrexJ9 wrote:
| I've been using Visual Studio Online (now Visual Studio
| Codespaces) which is the same tech, I've found it has
| everything my local VS Code had; extensions, terminal,
| debugging, themes, all the settings. Pretty remarkable, but as
| VS Code has always been a web application, it make some sense.
| I'm sure there'll be something missing but nothing major
| minimaxir wrote:
| It's plausible, given that VS Code is effectively a web app.
| (the exception in features could be Extensions)
|
| Not the first IDE to have full-feature parity on desktop and
| web.
| mikewhy wrote:
| Given that a locally running VS Code can interact with the
| host system, and a webpage cannot, I'm sure there will be
| some differences between the two.
|
| And like you said, the exception in features could be
| extensions. If that's the case, it's not "the full Visual
| Studio Code experience".
|
| (Not to take away from their announcement, it's very
| interesting and I've joined the wait list, just this type of
| absolute wording irks me).
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Well, the web app is interacting with a host system too --
| the host just happens to be different than your web browser
| environment.
|
| I mean, yes, there are some differences between the two
| (and keep in mind you can also access a Codespace via a
| locally installed copy of VS Code in a remote development
| environment, where the remote dev environment is the
| Codespace VM), but as far as I know, there are very few
| differences between how a remote environment locally works
| vs a remote environment using the browser-hosted editor.
|
| You're correct when you say there are differences, but I
| still feel like "full" experience is accurate. Full doesn't
| have to mean 1:1 copy. To me it just means aren't losing
| out on something.
|
| I work at Microsoft on Azure but not on VS Codespaces or GH
| Codespaces. I'm just a fan/user of both.
| airstrike wrote:
| Not having extensions alone already means it's not the _full_
| experience. How many people run vanilla VS Code?
|
| Can I run unit tests? Debug?
| dbjorge wrote:
| The article notes near the top that extensions are
| supported, and also answers your other questions.
| paavohtl wrote:
| It does have extensions[1]. It just might not be able to
| run _all_ extensions.
|
| [1] From the link: "Inside of a codespace, you'll have
| access to the Visual Studio Code Marketplace, and you can
| preload any extensions you want loaded at launch using a
| devcontainer configuration file. You can also personalize
| your codespace by pulling in dotfiles."
| pkaye wrote:
| Are extensions not allowed?
| factorialboy wrote:
| So.. let's say I host my source code with MS (GitHub), I develop
| using their web ide (visual studio code space) and then I deploy
| to their cloud (azure).
|
| Give it a decade and you'll have Microsoft specific developers
| and organizations who are locked in beyond rescue.
|
| It's always a fragmentation vs defragmentation battle.
| donmcronald wrote:
| It's going to be ALL developers getting locked in. You're
| seeing a 5-10 year plan in action here.
|
| 1. Create a popular, locally run dev editor.
|
| 2. Shift it to the cloud.
|
| 3. Build all new features into the cloud version only.
|
| 4. Ignore the locally run version until it's obsolete.
|
| 5. Developers rent the cloud version forever.
|
| The GitHub integration is going to be amazing for Microsoft
| because the allure of clicking a button and getting an instant
| development environment will be huge. Watch for a big campaign
| where popular frameworks start providing "Launch in Codespaces"
| or similar buttons.
|
| We'll get to a point where new developers won't even know how
| to set up a local development environment. I'd bet a lot that
| Microsoft is envisioning a world where developers pay $1000+
| per year for a combination of GitHub, Codespaces, Actions,
| Pipelines, etc..
|
| The idea of paying cloud compute rates for things like build
| agents is crazy to me, but here we are.
| marceloabsousa wrote:
| For me, the real appeal is to be able to share dev
| environments easily and make software development truly
| remote friendly.
|
| In the end, it will come down to latency, usability and
| pricing. I do agree with you though - I'm not paying $2K+ for
| a macbook pro and then pay to run VSCode in the cloud --
| something doesn't add up.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| I'm not clear on how this will make things easier. The
| default "environments" are just docker container defined in
| this repo: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-dev-
| containers/ except that you can leave them suspended when
| not using them. (For the non-GitHub version this is
| literally a VM provisioned by way of running a single pre-
| specified docker container. Suspending is presumably just
| suspending the whole VM. In the beta the GitHub branded
| version will not persist processes, so it would be more
| like stopping the VM when not in use rather than just
| suspending it.)
|
| As for the pricing, it will likely be in the same ballpark
| as the non-github branded version of this exact same
| service (modulo any included time with a paid github
| subscription): https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
| us/pricing/details/visual-stu...
|
| The estimated costs for full time development for one user
| with only one environment is ~$23.30/month.
|
| Each environment you leave in a suspended state for a whole
| month would cost $6.40. OF course, if you are willing to
| have your filesystem wiped and rebuild each time you start
| and stop coding, you can destroy the environments when not
| in use, in which case you will probably want to create a
| custom dockerfile to customize the environment.
| rckoepke wrote:
| > We'll get to a point where new developers won't even know
| how to set up a local development environment.
|
| I think we're already there. I think system administration is
| the current biggest stumbling block that new programmers
| have. Tools like repl.it, google colab, etc. remove these
| (stumbling blocks | learning opportunities).
|
| At many universities, a lot of code is now written in online
| editors that compile, run, and check against public and
| hidden unit tests (sort of like codewars but lower quality).
|
| I personally love learning systems administration but there
| is very real demand for services that abstract it all away.
|
| That said, you enumerated an effective roadmap for this kind
| of transition. I suspect it will generate an increased annual
| cost similar in magnitude to the Office 365 migration.
| oefrha wrote:
| > Give it a decade and you'll have Microsoft specific
| developers and organizations who are locked in beyond rescue.
|
| Don't need to give it a decade, you can find plenty now, or two
| decades ago. It's not like Microsoft is a new entrant to the
| IDE market with VSCode or GiHub Codespaces (hint: the VS part
| of VSCode).
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Github is getting Microsofted, there were some good things about
| this in the recent past, but I wonder...
| danso wrote:
| What does "getting Microsofted" mean, especially in the context
| of the last 10 years?
| yarrel wrote:
| A thin dusting of "Open Source" over lock-in, spyware, and
| censorship.
|
| To thunderous applause from people who are fooled by the
| first element of that.
| _pmf_ wrote:
| Two years, tops, then it'll be unusable.
| vnchr wrote:
| Three years, and we'll have a version control ribbon to
| replace all pre-existing UI elements.
| marceloabsousa wrote:
| I tend to agree, it's quite crazy what they are trying to
| pull off technically. It's hard to imagine how all these
| features will not impact the service. Also it's probably just
| bleeding money... millions of dollars on CodeScan alone.
| diggan wrote:
| So GitHub (Microsoft) continues to venture way beyond just source
| control and it's directly related areas, into a much more overall
| "development" strategy, seemingly echoing what GitLab have been
| doing for a while.
|
| It's sad to see GitHub moving slowly into spreading itself too
| thin, instead of just improving the platform they have. They now
| try to replace CI services, donation platforms and now remote
| code editors.
|
| Seems their core service is still holding up so far, but with all
| these moves in different directions, I'm getting a bit worried
| that the SCM and software collaboration part will be left out. I
| think GitHub becoming SourceForgeV2 is closer than people think.
| It's bound to happen at one point.
| TroyaandAbed wrote:
| > Seems their core service is still holding up so far, but with
| all these moves in different directions, I'm getting a bit
| worried that the SCM and software collaboration part will be
| left out.
|
| They literally just made teams cheaper and added to their free
| tier.
| softwarejosh wrote:
| based on what is it bound to happen
| danieldk wrote:
| _They now try to replace CI services, donation platforms and
| now remote code editors._
|
| I am not too worried about spreading themselves too thinly.
| GitHub Actions is _much_ nicer than some of the competitors I
| used before (though I still love sr.ht builds).
|
| Also, it would be bad for them not to branch out. GitLab is now
| a strong competitor and they also provide many features beyond
| code hosting, such as CI, registries, etc.
|
| It is nice that there are three large players now (GitHub,
| GitLab, Atlassian). GitHub was stagnant for a while, but they
| seem to be moving fast again after GitLab became a serious
| competitor. It's a clear case where competition is benefitting
| the users, both in price and in platform capabilities.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| Indeed, the signal to noise ratio for GitHub is pretty rapidly
| decreasing. It's getting a lot harder to find the important
| details on any given page.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > It's sad to see GitHub moving slowly into spreading itself
| too thin
|
| People have been saying this every time GitHub has added a
| feature that wasn't SCM. How is this time any different?
|
| > I think GitHub becoming SourceForgeV2 is closer than people
| think. It's bound to happen at one point.
|
| How do you possibly jump from Codespaces to SourceForgeV2, and
| somehow proclaim it as certainty?
| simplify wrote:
| Since when is saying "I think" considered to "proclaim as
| certainty"?
| tomnipotent wrote:
| It's literally in the quote: "It's bound to happen at one
| point."
| kbumsik wrote:
| > instead of just improving the platform they have. They now
| try to replace CI services, donation platforms and now remote
| code editors.
|
| Aren't they in the category of "improving the platform they
| have"? What exactly do you want Github to be improved then?
| njudah wrote:
| By this logic, Apple should have stuck to Macs and never
| created the iPhone..
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I'm not sure it's bound to happen. They're owned by a trillion
| dollar company and Github is a super important tool in their
| overall developer strategy.
| jchw wrote:
| Oh, now things are getting interesting.
|
| I was a big fan of the idea of GitLab IDE, but never got too
| deep; it seemed like a great idea that could use more baking. But
| then I saw Theia and GitPod. I like GitPod, but I just wish it
| had better Github integration.
|
| Well, yeah. So... good job Github. Can't wait to try this one
| out.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| This is great - it basically is signalling how Microsoft is
| thinking about GitHub. I think vscode is on its way to be owned
| by the GitHub team.
|
| Will the same happen to Azure Devops ?
| reificator wrote:
| > _I think vscode is on its way to be owned by the GitHub
| team._
|
| God please no, especially if anyone from Atom is involved.
|
| I almost didn't even try vscode in the first place after atom
| soured me on electron.
| feniv wrote:
| Is the browser editing powered by Monaco or something else
| entirely? https://github.com/microsoft/monaco-editor
|
| Both repl.it and codesandbox.io seem to be Monaco based. This
| seems to have better support for VS Code extensions than what's
| available in Monaco.
| JoyrexJ9 wrote:
| It's not Monaco, which is a basic text editor, it's full VS
| Code (extensions, terminal, debugging) but in the browser
| greatgib wrote:
| Typical Microsoft strategy: Embrace, extend and extinguish
|
| Soon the Platform will be renamed 'Microsost Visual Studio
| Github' or 'Microsoft team Github'. Then 'microsoft Visual studio
| hub'.
|
| Then at somme point, Github will be inside Visual studio code
| online and not anymore the other way around!
| blackoil wrote:
| Github was since forever a proprietary product, so EEE doesn't
| apply here. This is equivalent to buying a closed email client
| and integrating it with MS Office.
| screye wrote:
| Just goes to show hard a reputation can be to let go of.
|
| Different people, different leadership, different strategy and
| an entirely innocuous product offering.
|
| But people still find a way to relate it to EEE.
| cachestash wrote:
| Its legacy thinking.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| Um, they own it, so why shouldn't they be allowed to put their
| name on it?
| nojito wrote:
| What?
|
| This is just them creating a one stop shop for developers by
| expanding what GitHub offers.
|
| Nothing to do with EEE
| greatgib wrote:
| And btw, don't forget the past. They had 'team fondation
| server' (that is now azure devons server'), that was shitty
| and git and Github were terrible competitors.:
| https://wilsonmar.github.io/tfs-vs-github/
|
| And all of tfs was volontarely deeply intricated with Visual
| studio useless things.
| greatgib wrote:
| Just think! You have Github. Git coming from linux, open
| source World, ... Also Github is notoriously the base of a
| lot of the ecosystem that is deprecating Microsoft solutions
| and environnement. All the website and js things of today are
| all developped by and for the unix world(linux, mac,..). In
| ms World, you were supposed to use proprietary closed heavy
| corporate solutions : c sharp, j2e, closed 'pro' server
| solutions.
|
| Si Github was the corner of all of that. Then they but it,
| suddenly there are a lot of features coming that bring it far
| from the scm job it was meant to. Now, it starts to be
| 'integrated' with ms tool ecosystem. How long before your
| Github accounts are merged, shared, replace with a Microsoft
| account?
|
| They will tell you that it makes sense and is needed because
| vscode needs to be interconnected with ms team and co...
| peey wrote:
| Is this built on top of open source technology? Say, can I
| integrate it into a gitlab instance, or host it on my own server?
| jankeromnes wrote:
| I don't think VS/GH Codespaces are open-source, and they don't
| seem to support GitLab.
|
| However, if you do need something based on open-source that
| works with GitLab, take a look at https://www.gitpod.io
|
| You can even self-host it: https://www.gitpod.io/blog/gitpod-
| self-hosted-0.4.0/
| zerkten wrote:
| The Visual Studio Codespaces have coverage of using your own
| server at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/visualstudio/online/how-to/....
| input_sh wrote:
| It used to be called Visual Studio Online (it was renamed to
| this) and you could indeed run it on your server, so I'm
| assuming that's not going to change.
|
| No clue about GitLab integration. I don't see myself using a
| browser tab instead of an app to write code, and the app does
| have GitLab plugins, so I'm gonna go with probably.
| kart23 wrote:
| Wow this seems pretty sick.
|
| Gitlab has a decent web ide, I think this may be github playing
| catch up, but I'm hopeful that this competition gets us a better
| product on both sides.
| nemacol wrote:
| At first glance this seems great for me. I was a big fan of
| Cloud9 before they were purchased by Amazon.
|
| I was new to dev world and had never touched AWS so the
| transition to AWS C9 left me bewildered and I just gave up on it.
|
| This seems like this would fill that role for me pretty well.
|
| Bonus points - I currently use Visual Studio Code as my goto
| tool.
| reggieband wrote:
| Microsoft is really the best at the slow strategic burn.
|
| * You host your project in github
|
| * You fund your project using github sponsors
|
| * You develop your project using github codespaces
|
| * You compile, test and deploy using github actions
|
| * You cloud host on azure
|
| Each individual feature is definitely great. I'm not trying to be
| critical of Microsoft trying to turn their investment in github
| into a profitable business. This is a kind of vertical
| integration that is guaranteed to lead to some efficiencies.
|
| One prediction based on this stack is the next piece could be
| some sort of subscription payment architecture. I wouldn't be
| surprised to see some kind of Microsoft Marketplace integration
| coming, but maybe branded under github. Some kind of SaaS
| subscription enabler.
| suyash wrote:
| Yup all the free stuff is ultimately to lead us into using and
| paying for Azure. Need an open source alternative to GitHub.
| KukicAdnan wrote:
| Why is that a bad thing? If you found value in Azure and it
| solved your problem, why is that a negative?
| yarrel wrote:
| The trap is comfy and warm. Why ask what the springs are
| connected to?
| aprdm wrote:
| Doesn't gitlab fit the bill here?
| Kipters wrote:
| Why? It's not like you MUST deploy on Azure
| donmcronald wrote:
| I think it's more about all of the integration leading to
| efficiencies that are hard to ignore while they're being
| subsidized / promoted. It'll start out as something where
| the value proposition is too good to ignore, but, as time
| goes on, they'll tier off features and charge a premium as
| you scale up.
|
| There was a time when I was hopeful and though Microsoft
| would take a developer first approach with the end goal
| being making it easy to deploy to Azure. After seeing the
| VSO (the old name for Codespaces) pricing I'm a lot more
| cynical. Microsoft's going to be altruistic until they're
| not.
|
| Go look at the pricing for VSO. They have a full time dev
| (100 hours a month - lol) estimated at a cost of $23 USD
| per month. Just wait until there's some type of marketplace
| for extension developers. The local version of VSCode will
| disappear overnight and (IMO) we'll be paying $50+ / month
| for the same thing that's free right now.
|
| Get ready to pay for everything per user per month for the
| rest of your life.
| nikmd23 wrote:
| Hi! PM on the Codespaces team here.
|
| I wanted to quickly help calm any potential concerns
| about changes to VS Code or its model.
|
| Codespaces is a separate, additional service from VS
| Code, very much focused on providing compute catered to
| developers and their workflows. We hope you'll use and
| love it, but we're also very happy if you'd prefer to
| continue to use VS Code in the ways that you may have
| previously done.
|
| Either way, we will continue to invest heavily in VS Code
| as you know it. Codespaces will not change that.
|
| Hopefully that helps clarify any concerns!
| nicoburns wrote:
| > The local version of VSCode will disappear overnight
|
| That's the beauty of open source though. VSCode is
| prominent enough that someone will fork it and maintain
| it if Microsoft pulls the plug.
| donmcronald wrote:
| My fear is that an officially supported marketplace for
| selling extensions would be appealing enough that
| important extensions would put all future development
| effort into their marketplace versions and cease
| development of local versions.
| evilduck wrote:
| Gitlab CE, Gitea, Gogs
| jannes wrote:
| Some background on these:
|
| Gitea is a fork of Gogs. Both are written in Go and are
| pretty light on resources (they support SQLite as database
| backend).
|
| Gitlab is heavier on resources and requires at least
| Postgresql and Redis.
| ckok wrote:
| Gitlab looks nicer and has a lot more features even in
| the open source edition. (Though some paid features seem
| to be arbitrary paid vs free, like scoped tags, a feature
| everyone could use is paid, while a really Enterprise
| feature like kubernetes support is free)
| dkarlovi wrote:
| GitLab has been great for a while and actually had some
| features before GH.
| sytse wrote:
| Thanks for the mention. As for how the features today map:
|
| 1. GitHub Insights => GitLab Insights
| https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/insights/ Code
| Review Analytics https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/
| code_review_analyt... DevOps Score https://docs.gitlab.com/
| ee/user/instance_statistics/dev_ops_... and Value Stream
| analytics https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/value_s
| tream_analy...
|
| 2. GitHub CodeScanning => GitLab SAST
| https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/sast/
| and Secret Detection https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/applic
| ation_security/sast/#s...
|
| 3. GitHub Codespaces => GitLab Live Preview with client
| side evaluation https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web
| _ide/index.html#c... and upcoming server side evaluation
| https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/167 which
| would work both with on-premises Kubernetes clusters and in
| any cloud.
| misterhtmlcss wrote:
| Simple but big issue I have is getting solutions that
| suit the platform. Often when I'm looking for help on
| something it gives me the on-prem solution. Docs on your
| website are confusing for this reason and that's why I
| stopped using. Takes me 30 seconds to solve a problem on
| GH and 5min to solve the same problem on GL. Clean that
| up so when devs try out the platform it's slick and easy
| to buy into not annoying and difficult.
| mbreese wrote:
| Sourcehut would like to have a word...
|
| https://sr.ht/
| suyash wrote:
| I like the concept but the UI is so ugly
| brightball wrote:
| I had not seen that...interesting.
| mbreese wrote:
| It was just on the front page last week for a new feature
| launch (project hubs). The design is very minimal, but
| it's organized into several different composable
| features. The author is on here often.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23030489
|
| I haven't migrated over completely from GH yet, but it's
| a compelling option.
| phillc73 wrote:
| Codeberg[1] also recently had some conversations here.[2]
|
| [1] https://codeberg.org/
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22795930
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Source hut is cool. Among things, it prioritizes exposing
| and leveraging Git's existing functionality wherever
| possible, like email patches, rather than building new
| proprietary functionality on top of Git like Github and
| others do.
| AgentME wrote:
| Everything about Github's PR workflow is killer to me, so
| to me personally the message I take away from this is
| that Source Hut isn't even competing with Github in the
| parts I care about.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| If the one particular aspect I mentioned isn't for you
| then why even bother wasting your valuable time
| responding? Just go read their website instead and see if
| there _is_ something for you. Maybe there is, maybe there
| isn 't, but at least then you'd know definitively. Much
| better use of your time and effort. I'll even save you a
| few clicks:
|
| https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-
| availabilit...
|
| https://sourcehut.org/
| etepwilz wrote:
| I definitely agree - was thinking about this in 2018 when
| thinking about the acquisition, and it's really interesting to
| see how this is driving the competitive landscape between Azure
| and AWS: http://redgoldleader.blogspot.com/2018/07/using-
| continuous-d...
| mritchie712 wrote:
| I see a Marketplace, but not their own payments architecture. I
| think what would be more likely is better project management
| built into Github.
| m_ke wrote:
| Wait till they have linkedin spammers trying to recruit you
| directly in your IDE.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Don't forget about VSCode! It's very quickly becoming one of
| the best free editors out there, replacing Sublime, Atom and
| the rest. I'm actually curious, will this be using Atom, it's
| own thing, or VS Code as the editor backend?
|
| I have actually been running code-server [0] which finally
| allows me to have my powerful editor with all my settings and
| extensions and working with my own files on any device.
|
| [0] https://github.com/cdr/code-server
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I 'm actually curious, will this be using Atom, it's own
| thing, or VS Code as the editor backend?_
|
| Isn't it obvious? VS Code.
| apozem wrote:
| > Don't forget about VSCode! It's very quickly becoming one
| of the best free editors out there
|
| I don't know if people realize just how much market share VS
| Code has grabbed. It went from 7% to 50% in five years,
| according some some surveys [1]. Microsoft is quietly
| dominating this part of the stack. [2]
|
| [1]: https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/vs-code-
| javas...
|
| [2]: This is _not_ an invitation to debate the merits of VS
| Code or tell me which editor you use, just an observation of
| growth
| diminish wrote:
| It's hard to make a profit from a code editor - i think.
| but will it allow MS to grab developer mind share to focus
| on C# .NET and Azure?
| miohtama wrote:
| I feel New Microsoft is a lot.of about
| TypeScript/JavaScript. TypeScript development is
| dominated by Visual Studio Code.
| apozem wrote:
| MS constructing a path between different levels of the
| development stack. They're integrating languages they
| control with their super popular IDE with their insanely
| popular source code repository with their cloud provider.
|
| My bet is they won't stop you from going off the path
| (e.g. using VS Code to push to Bitbucket and deploy to
| AWS), but they will make the MS path the easiest and the
| default.
|
| VS Code in GitHub is a perfect example of this. Every
| integration makes it easier and more appealing to your
| CTO to Just Use Microsoft TM.
| sq_ wrote:
| > replacing Sublime, Atom and the rest
|
| Regarding Atom, I've heard some whispers around the internet
| that they may slowly wind it down in favor of VSCode so that
| Microsoft doesn't have two competing text editors. Anyone
| know how true that might be?
| edraferi wrote:
| Github CodeSpaces is explicitly VS Code. Their tagline is
| "Get the full Visual Studio Code experience without leaving
| GitHub."
| woile wrote:
| A netlify competitor? One click deployments? create release ->
| deploy
| desertratTX wrote:
| We're not even porting GitHub to Azure. Our tooling is
| completely platform agnostic, and MSFT Actions facilitating
| deployment to Azure are built in the same platform and open
| sourced the same way that AWS, GCP and everyone else are
| offering theirs.
|
| GitHub isn't driving anyone to Azure Devops, we'd prefer folks
| to migrate from AzDO to GitHub. The focus of much of our work
| is building out the GitHub platform to meet and fairly quickly
| exceed the capabilities of AzDO (or any other platform for that
| matter) in every respect
| nogabebop23 wrote:
| As someone how really like github and really dislikes azure
| devops - and a corporate direction pushing us from the former
| to the later - any idea what their endgame is as these two
| converge?
| slim wrote:
| the end game is the developer gig economy. you assign a
| ticket to yourself, write the code while they analyse your
| behavior to calculate your hourly rate then you get paid
| st-isidore wrote:
| It might work for low level development tasks (which could
| very well be most of the software development happening in
| the world, who knows?), but not for anything more advanced.
| lstamour wrote:
| Edit: I misunderstood your comment as about Azure generally
| and not Azure DevOps specifically. I see Azure DevOps as the
| "full service" version of GitHub's slightly more "DIY"
| approach. DevOps can also be customized and sold by partners,
| consultants, I think. GitHub if anything, might move more to
| a "consultant network" approach. I think Microsoft is
| maintaining two district brands for developers, for the time
| being. I originally wrote:
|
| I think there's a clear benefit to Microsoft for GitHub to
| internally use Azure, but I think there's a clear benefit to
| Microsoft's developer community, GitHub and the Microsoft
| Partner ecosystem for GitHub to support AWS and GCP via open
| source, AWS Marketplace, Docker and anything else that helps
| ensure GitHub is useful independent of the rest of
| Microsoft's services -- GitHub being impartial is more
| important to Microsoft than the extra market share they might
| -- might -- get.
| nicoburns wrote:
| The corporate direction could be based on pricing. Azure
| DevOps (pay per concurrent job) can be a lot cheaper than
| Github Actions (pay per minute of CI time, with macOS minutes
| counting as 10 minutes each).
| nickspag wrote:
| I also use Azure DevOps for work and am a recently-former
| MSFT person. From what I've heard from those still there,
| most of the new development is going towards Github Actions,
| which is also reflected in their staffing movements. However
| with GHA running on top of ADO pipeline infrastructure
| (public info), Microsoft's success with the strategic slow
| burn as OP called it, and their super-long-term-support
| reputation, it's probably not in their interest to rush the
| move. I'd be willing to bet that in a year+ or so the writing
| on the public wall becomes much clearer. To that extent,
| we've started planning a migration at my company.
| dathinab wrote:
| If webhooks become increasingly less useful we will know
| what thinks are going.
| ksec wrote:
| And strangely enough, Microsoft is currently the only big three
| Cloud Vendor which you likely wont be competing against.
|
| If you are doing anything on the Web, you are competing against
| Google ( and Facebook ). If you are doing Retail, e-commerce,
| you are competing against Amazon.
|
| Microsoft is trying to turn the Cloud into its new OS before
| Amazon does it. But from the way things stand this will likely
| never happen.
|
| So as far as I can tell I have no problem with that strategy at
| all.
| eating555 wrote:
| So seems like GitHub is in the shape of VS Code now. Good job
| Microsoft. Atom is not your child anymore.
| sparky_ wrote:
| Must be fun for @sytse to watch these GitHub announcements every
| year, where they consistently release the same thing GitLab
| rolled out two years prior.
|
| Codespaces -> https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide/
|
| Insights -> https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/insights/
|
| GH Actions -> https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/
|
| etc
| threeseed wrote:
| Gitlab is a bit of a mess though:
|
| a) Gitlab.com is ridiculously slow. Even the CEO admits they
| failed to invest in it.
|
| b) You can't disable features you don't need so you end up with
| a sidebar full of Kubernetes and Security features for a Git
| project dedicated to documentation.
|
| c) Staggering amount of open issues and merge requests so you
| feel discouraged from even raising anything since it just gets
| lost in the weeds.
|
| d) On the main Git project screen there are 15 buttons.
| Including again ones for "Add Kubernetes cluster" or "Add
| License" which you can't remove or hide even though it's
| irrelevant for 99% of Git projects.
|
| e) Feature set and billing are all over the place. It has great
| project/issue management but in order to get say roadmaps you
| need to have everyone in your team on the $99/month plan. Even
| though they aren't developers. So in some cases Gitlab ends up
| being much more expensive than Jira + Github.
|
| I could keep going. But Gitlab is an example of a company that
| is moving too fast and needs much better product management. I
| would take Github's more deliberate approach any day.
| clenneville wrote:
| Thank you for your feedback!
|
| Regarding performance, we've made some recent improvements
| (here's one example: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
| org/gitlab/-/issues/30507#note_293...), but we know we need
| to do more. We're actively working to improve our sitespeed
| (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/issues/7154),
| and we have several other improvements in process this
| quarter.
|
| Regarding disabling features and the Git project screen, our
| UX research team has heard this feedback from other users.
| It's fair feedback, and we're looking at how to address it.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| We host our own GitLab instance and it's been great.
| Performance is way better than the public GitLab site and
| it's been dependable. It would be nice to disable some of the
| features but, overall, everyone at my company is happy.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I'm a solo developer and I disagree with everything you have
| said. Gitlab has been an absolute joy to use. Sure, it has a
| lot of features, but it's not like you are forced to use
| stuff you don't need. My workflow is pretty simple, yet I
| have never felt like I'm using a sledgehammer to kill a fly.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I agree that there are loads of open Gitlab issues, but I've
| found that their team are really easy to communicate with,
| really open to feedback and somehow also respond really
| quickly on issues. I like that they use Gitlab for so much
| and that they're still really open to hearing about a
| workflow that's different to theirs and keen to help with
| that.
|
| As a user I really like that they have their tickets open
| like that. I'd never contact Github and tell them about some
| minor feature that would be helpful or give them feedback on
| a new feature they've released because how would you even do
| that in a way that's not annoying? And with Gitlab you often
| get to feed in at the design stage which you're completely
| shut out from anywhere else.
|
| I'm not sure if you've actually had issues go missing - I
| know they have loads of repos and I've only engaged with a
| few - but my experience definitely hasn't been that things
| get lost in the weeds.
|
| For what it's worth I agree with all the extra features being
| too visible. I kinda get it - one day I'll get round to
| learning Kubernetes and I'll probably do something with
| Gitlab's integration when I do - but while I don't use them
| those features are definitely too visible and add too much
| clutter.
| acdha wrote:
| This isn't really a useful observation -- it's not like any of
| those were something unique which nobody had thought of before
| GitLab implemented them, either. It'd be far more useful to
| compare them knowledgeably and talk about their respective
| benefits and drawbacks.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| This is a "Good Thing" for everyone involved.
|
| Look at Android vs iOS. Each release sees popular features
| "borrowed" from the competition. Back and forth Google takes
| something Apple did well, then Apple turns around and does the
| same.
|
| Tight competition between two platforms gives us, the
| consumers/users, the best. It drives innovation, it drives down
| prices (I mean, lets be honest, GitLab had the entire "free"
| thing down a LONG time ago), and the features that we do have
| get refined to be even better.
| Austin_Conlon wrote:
| How do the implementations compare?
| mplewis wrote:
| In this case, they don't. Codespaces offers a lot more
| functionality than the GitLab web IDE.
| gmaster1440 wrote:
| VS Code online is a substantially more robust offering than the
| GitLab Web IDE. Not an apples to apples comparison of the
| actual substance of the offerings here.
| tommoor wrote:
| I'm sure he'll have his usual blogpost moaning about how Gitlab
| already has it by end of day.
| factorialboy wrote:
| To be fair, nothing was announced today by GH that wasn't in
| GL for several years.
|
| Perhaps the quality of VS Code trumps GL WebIDE ... But I am
| not the sort of developer to ditch my desktop editors / IDEs
| for something running in a browser (electron or otherwise).
| sdesol wrote:
| I think the most important thing that most people maybe
| forgetting is, GitHub maybe announcing these features, but
| these features were the results of acquiring companies that
| were solely focused on these features for years.
|
| So if you take this into consideration, GitHub's feature
| has not only been in works for a while, but they have been
| refined to a point that GitLab will have a hard time
| catching up to.
|
| There is no way GitLab will be able to compete on the IDE
| front-end for a while since GitHub's solution is
| essentially VSCode which they own and is iterated on at an
| incredible rate. And the one thing Microsoft hasn't made
| open source, that makes remote work incredibility powerful,
| is what makes Codespace incredibility difficult for GitLab
| to compete with.
|
| Their security scan feature is the result of acquiring a
| leader in the field with expertise that GitLab will have a
| hard time matching/hiring for. And GitHub's Insights
| feature is the result of multiple acquisitions with years
| of previous experience.
|
| These announcements maybe new, but the solutions that
| GitHub has released is years ahead of GitLab's existing
| solution.
| sytse wrote:
| Why wait until the end of the day on the west coast? :) We
| just posted https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/05/06/git-
| challenge/ where we encourage you to compare:
|
| 1. GitHub Insights with GitLab Insights, Contribution
| Analytics, Issues Analytics, Productivity Analytics, Value
| Stream Analytics, DevOps Score, Code Review Analytics, and
| CI/CD Analytics.
|
| 2. GitHub security features with GitLab Container Scanning,
| Dependency List, Dependency Scanning, Dynamic Application
| Security Testing (DAST), Security Dashboard, Static
| Application Security Testing (SAST), and Secrets Detection.
|
| 3. GitHub Codespaces with the GitLab Web IDE, CI/CD
| Environments, Review apps, and Live Preview.
| sparky_ wrote:
| I'd definitely encourage everyone to git GL a try - our
| teams switched over from GH + Jira about a year ago, and
| haven't looked back. The integrated CI and project
| management features are a game changer.
| jesselawson wrote:
| I have to agree. I have been a big champion of GH but the
| more I use GL the more I keep asking myself why I don't
| just do all my stuff in GL.
| tomstoms wrote:
| Git it a try, pun intended? :-D
| sparky_ wrote:
| 'Twas a simple typo, but I'll happily retcon it into a
| pun!
| klysm wrote:
| GH is clearly not innovating nearly as much as GitLab and
| hasn't been for a long time, but since they have so a huge
| chunk of the market already they can see what works and what
| doesn't work for GitLab and cherry pick what they like. Apple
| operates in a very similar manner - in many areas they lag
| behind.
| wiredone wrote:
| I'm not sure this is correct. GH seems to take their time,
| and get things right. They're product leadership is really
| top tier compared to the rest of the tools providers who are
| often quick to release a feature half-baked hoping to
| iterate. I've rarely seen a GH feature that's not fully
| polished and "makes sense" on day 1.
|
| They are the Apple of the dev tools space. Less is nearly
| always more.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Yeah, well good luck with that one.
|
| With this feature, MS just ventured in a space where no-one can
| compare yet.
|
| If this ever gets popular, that's check mate right here.
| mikewhy wrote:
| Was this reply to the wrong comment? Cause your first line is
| a total non sequitur to what you're replying to. And this is
| definitely a space people both a) can compare (compete?) and
| b) MS is playing catchup to (albeit with a great advantage).
| ccktlmazeltov wrote:
| BTW I've seen the same thing on Zoho side, they have so many
| products and they all work seamlessly across one another, yet
| they have a very little market share.
| suyash wrote:
| So is this another play to lock us into Azure Cloud?
| chadlavi wrote:
| This is maybe the most relevant threat to the macbook pro product
| line I've seen in a while. Seems like I could do everything I
| need on an iPad with this, without Apple having to give me access
| to a shell in iOS.
| bengalister wrote:
| I understand that many companies will be seduced by the offering
| and what could come next:
|
| * No more source code on developers machine so better for
| security.
|
| * No more development environment to setup and all the devs
| sharing the exact same settings: simplified onboarding of devs.
|
| * No need for costly developers machines.
|
| * No more infra to setup to host the source code repository, the
| CI/CD workflows (even if many companies already moved that to the
| cloud).
|
| But as a developer I am worried what could also come next:
|
| * dashboards for managers with all sort of stats on developers:
| code quality with arbitrary rules, productivity (number of lines
| of codes), number of stars from other developers, etc.
|
| * being locked-in with the Microsoft toolchain all along from
| source code edition to deployment in Azure. For instance
| currently I chose to do my NodeJs backend development on vim with
| coc-vim and found it to be much lighter than Vscode (I have a
| very old developers machine)
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| > dashboards for managers with all sort of stats on developers:
| code quality with arbitrary rules, productivity (number of
| lines of codes), number of stars from other developers, etc.
|
| How does GitHub Codespaces allow for any of this? All of this
| was already possible with plain git, no?
| yarrel wrote:
| You give managers too much credit.
| [deleted]
| troycarlson wrote:
| My thoughts:
|
| * Some teams do this already with git data...but if it's free
| as part of a team's development platform then maybe the less
| sophisticated managers who don't know how to interpret the
| data will misuse it?
|
| * If the editor is heavily instrumented then even more
| granular "productivity" metrics could be extracted, like time
| spent with the tab active, etc. which aren't available with a
| vanilla install of other editors. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| strgcmc wrote:
| Sounds like a form of (job?) security-through-obscurity,
| no? The data was always there, but not all managers were
| savvy enough to process it and weaponize it.
|
| In the end, obscurity is just not a durable defense. Better
| to earn trust with good managers, and avoid companies that
| let bad managers flourish. If you don't have the ability to
| quit a bad manager or bad working environment, then no
| amount of tooling choices by GitHub/Microsoft was going to
| save you anyways.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > dashboards for managers with all sort of stats on developers:
| code quality with arbitrary rules, productivity (number of
| lines of codes)
|
| ...down to number of keystrokes. Microsoft has a 25+ years
| history of spying on users.
|
| > being locked-in with the Microsoft toolchain all along from
| source code edition to deployment in Azure
|
| That's the real endgame. Lock-in has been Microsoft go-to
| strategy since the beginning.
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| How does something like this work when you have configurations
| not in source control? Access keys, passwords, IPs for database
| connectivity.
| novok wrote:
| It would live in your own personal instance, just like how a
| lot of company confidential data lives in google docs and
| gmail today.
| wackget wrote:
| Great, but Github doesn't even support sorting your repositories
| into folders and is ignoring years-old requests to change that:
| https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/74
|
| Gitlab does.
| mylons wrote:
| Neat, use gitlab then. Get over your tribalism and use the
| right tool for the job.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| I am surprised this is not using atom. After all I that that was
| developed by the GitHub team. But I guess since Microsoft owns
| them VScode comes first.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| VScode is lightyears ahead of Atom in nearly every way. It
| would make no sense to choose Atom over VScode for something
| like this.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| See discussion over here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23093150
| raghavtoshniwal wrote:
| "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" If this succeeds in
| reducing the friction for someone to submit a patch/bug fix, the
| number of 'eyeballs' for open-source projects would increase
| substantially.
| laurentdc wrote:
| Small bug in the signup page, if you select and then deselect
| "Other", it still stores the selected state and doesn't let you
| send the form [0]
|
| [0] https://i.imgur.com/tNAzrFw.png
| downerending wrote:
| Argh--does anyone understand what this is supposed to be? (beyond
| what GitHub already provides)
| kick wrote:
| I can only imagine how the people at GitHub paid to work on Atom
| are feeling right now.
|
| Microsoft hasn't been kind to them!
| sandstrom wrote:
| The people at Github that used to be paid to work on Atom may
| be the ones that built this :)
| kick wrote:
| Wouldn't be my guess, personally:
|
| https://github.com/atom
| mempko wrote:
| yeah, not much action there. Vim gets much more action per
| day.
| abrowne wrote:
| No, this is based on VS Code's Visual Studio Online:
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/30/microsofts-visual-
| studio-o...
| libria wrote:
| Sandstrom is suggesting the ex-Atom devs were pivoted to VS
| Code Online and contributed to this release.
| abrowne wrote:
| Ah, that's obvious now!
| dflock wrote:
| Pretty sure they haven't been paid to work on Atom since the
| acquisition: https://github.com/atom/atom/graphs/contributors
|
| They killed Atom the day they took over - they haven't had the
| balls to say anything publicly, but just go look at the commit
| graphs in the Atom repos. Here's a summary:
| https://twitter.com/DuncanLock/status/1177747512905461760
| oaiey wrote:
| Agree. And considering the size of this, they are executing a
| very well defined playbook. Sounds like a very successful
| company integration to me. Will be good for everyone.
| sneak wrote:
| I was expecting this years ago when GitHub started work on Atom.
| This will be quite useful for people who are willing to
| participate in the Microsoft ecosystem.
| zaksoup wrote:
| Will this support Teletype style multi-cursor collaboration? I'm
| very excited about this for easy dev environment setup but if it
| had easy collaboration it would be immediately adoptable at my
| org for pair programming while we're all pandemic-remote.
| underdeserver wrote:
| I like how they say that if you don't want to develop in a
| browser, you can connect VS Code. You're still developing in a
| browser.
|
| Still a great IDE though.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > You're still developing in a browser.
|
| How so? Node/Electron != browser, though I see how the whole
| HTML/JS/CSS thing can be confusing.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| I think it's saying you're still using chrome under the
| covers when you use electron apps.
| [deleted]
| IAmLiterallyAB wrote:
| It's a browser without an address bar.
| seph-reed wrote:
| or any http connections...
| [deleted]
| leoncvlt wrote:
| So how would this differ from CodeSandbox or StackBlitz?
| pot8n wrote:
| I've already been using VSCode remote over SSH on cheap yet
| powerful Hetzner instances. You can do this on any cloud vendor
| and you can, if you want, put your home directory as a volume and
| resize up and down your machine as you want.
| Pandabob wrote:
| This also seems quite similar to repl.it, which I've been
| enjoying a lot recently.
|
| I wonder if they'll support plugins and importing other VS Code
| settings to the online editor.
| amasad wrote:
| I doubt you'd get the same quick & simple experience you have
| with Repl.it. This is more replacing your local VSCode, which
| is not what Repl.it aims to replace.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| this is not even just replacing your local vs code.
|
| This is a minor variation of the existing Visual Studio
| Online (now renamed Visual Studio Codespace) product.
|
| The core of it is running an automatically created azure
| hosted docker container. It automatically checks out your
| repository. It actually runs the whole VS Code backend on the
| remote machine, with the the user interface being provided by
| the "local" VS Code instance (web or desktop).
|
| I'm going to bet this will end up with identical pricing to
| the existing product, at least if you don't pay for any
| github products. If you do, there might be some discount or
| included running time with those products.
|
| The only part that sounds new here is the editor integration
| into the GitHub site.
| jfkebwjsbx wrote:
| Looks great!
|
| At least now we don't need to run VS Code in another Chromium
| instance!
|
| Now that Microsoft has Chromium Edge in Windows, it should be
| possible to provide a good way to spawn and communicate with
| Chromium GUIs/windows from native Win32 apps! That would be
| killer!
| dstaley wrote:
| Boy do I have a surprise for you!
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/hosting/webv...
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| This is pretty epic. VS Code has proven itself to be one of the
| best (if not the best) and feature-complete editor out there.
| It's basically an IDE of a ton of languages at this point, and
| it's completely free. Integrating it with GH is a no-brainer move
| from Microsoft's standpoint, to increase market share even
| further with more seamless integration.
|
| If they're able to do setup for Python, Go, Ruby, and JavaScript
| projects, I suspect that'll be > 50% of all professional work
| (both FOSS and private) done on GH.
| wpietri wrote:
| Free is a huge minus in my book. If I'm not the customer, then
| I'm the product. I'll happily keep paying for my JetBrains all-
| product license: https://www.jetbrains.com/all/
| meheleventyone wrote:
| > If I'm not the customer, then I'm the product.
|
| This is not necessarily always the case, for example the free
| thing might be a loss leader, exist to boost secondary or
| tertiary effects or otherwise exist for non-profit motivated
| reasons.
| wpietri wrote:
| Sure, it's a generalization, not an absolute. But for me
| there's not a big difference between "I'm the end product"
| and "I'm an intermediate product used to increase sales of
| the end product". Microsoft isn't a charity; they're an
| oligopoly pushing hard to keep their stock price up.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| I think your characterization of being an "intermediate
| product" is also dubious since you aren't being sold in
| any reasonable sense ala the way you are with ad tech.
| And whilst MS are obviously in the business of making
| money that doesn't mean it's the only thing they'll do.
| wpietri wrote:
| If you'd like to argue that MS is giving this away just
| to be nice, instead of as a calculated move toward
| sustaining or increasing revenue, I'd be interested to
| see that. But for now let's assume they're doing what
| their shareholders expect: making money.
|
| We can't know whether I'm an intermediate product without
| knowing their goals, which they're unlikely to be
| transparent about. But lets suppose one of their goals is
| usage and market share statistics that they use as proof
| to convince paying customers. In that case, my usage is
| very much an intermediate product.
|
| Or let's imagine that one of their goals is restored
| market dominance in developer tools. To that end, they
| would like their competitors to receive less money,
| leading to their collapse. If they paid somebody else to
| give away developer tools for that purpose, I'd obviously
| be the product. That they're paying for that internally
| obscures it, but fundamentally doesn't change the
| exploitative nature of the relationship.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| If all this is really what you believe rather than just
| being argumentative then how can you use any product.
| Usage and market share statistics are just as useful to
| JetBrains in that regard and you pay them for the
| privilege of being an "intermediate product".
| wpietri wrote:
| Jetbrains shows no signs of wanting to be a monopoly
| player in development tools. I've been a customer a long
| time, and I think they've done a great job of balancing
| making money with doing solid work and serving their
| customers. Microsoft, on the other hand, has a long
| history of willful domination and exploitation, and
| they've specifically done that with free products to
| kneecap competitors.
| topkai22 wrote:
| I doubt codespaces will be free- this is how VS Code starts
| seeing increased monetization. It'll be interesting to see if
| the self hosted codespace options are no-cost as well.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Even if you're the customer, 99.9% of the time, you're also
| the product.
| wpietri wrote:
| Not in the sense which that is meant. The foundation of
| commerce is long-term, positive-sum relationships between
| people. The people at my corner grocery are looking out for
| the needs of me and my neighbors; we look out for them in
| return. That relationship is fundamentally different than
| the one between cow and meatpacker.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Yes, you are the product in the sense that this is meant.
| The people at my grocery store track my purchases using
| my loyalty card, use that data to influence their ads,
| and sell that data to others.
|
| Jetbrains might not do this, but if they can make money
| from this, they would be just as incentivized to do this
| as GitHub.
| wpietri wrote:
| Good thing my grocery store doesn't have a loyalty
| program or track purchases then. Maybe you should use a
| different one?
|
| I agree the lets-exploit-the-customers behavior you're
| talking about is currently common, but it's far from
| universal. And regardless, in a value-for-money
| relationship one has power that just isn't there when one
| is purely being sold.
| recursive wrote:
| Do you avoid public drinking fountains? (Covid-19 aside)
| wpietri wrote:
| Huh. Do you really not see any difference between a
| publicly funded accommodation and attempts to dominate a
| market by a company with a long history of abusing a
| monopoly?
| recursive wrote:
| I do see some differences. I was attempting to use those
| differences to illustrate one of the ways that this maxim
| about consumers and products is overly broad.
| yarrel wrote:
| It's interesting that this is the moment at which you
| chose to do that.
| wpietri wrote:
| Exactly. All generalizations are broad. But nobody goes
| around objecting to generalizations every time they see
| one; they'd get nothing else done. So the pattern in
| which they do that is always informative.
| brndn wrote:
| > If I'm not the customer, then I'm the product.
|
| This isn't _always_ true, so it 's best to look at it on a
| case by case basis. One wouldn't suggest that Typescript
| coders are a product of MS.
|
| So far, they don't seem to be treating vscode users like the
| product. I think they're are building out great free tooling
| to entice users to use their other paid services like Azure.
| tekkk wrote:
| Well, you must then love Oracle. I mean, what you are saying
| is just silly. Of course the producers of FOSS want something
| in return, but sometimes it's not nefarious as you might
| imagine it to be.
|
| It could be a strategical investment to create an ecosystem
| out of technology that you know the best and can influence
| its direction, to then sell customizations and develop
| services on top of it. Like MS is doing here. Or RedHat. Or
| Google with Kubernetes. Or Canonical with Ubuntu. And so on.
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| > If I'm not the customer, then I'm the product.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by this, care to expand? Aren't
| you also the product for JetBrains, since you're one of the
| customers that's keeping them afloat?
| [deleted]
| vlunkr wrote:
| No the JetBrains IDE is the product. This phrase generally
| refers to things like Facebook or Google. They offer tons
| of free services in order to gather data about you and sell
| it to advertisers.
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| Thanks. VS Code is actually no saint in this regard. MS
| collects metrics through VS Code's "telemetry" option (I
| think toggle-able to off, not sure) and this data has no
| doubt been used to improve VS Code and help MS build
| better product offerings and hence more rake in more
| revenue.
| wpietri wrote:
| Sure. The foundation of commerce is sustained relationships
| where value is mutually exchanged. I give you a few bucks,
| you give me a cheeseburger. If fix somebody's problem with
| a computer, they give me cash. Product for payment; value
| for value.
|
| When some commercial effort departs from that, it's good to
| be suspicious. The bills are getting paid somehow. E.g.,
| look at network television from 1960-2000 or so. The
| viewers were not customers. The viewers were the product
| being sold to people who wanted to manipulate them.
| Advertisers were the customers, so the programs were
| generally about getting maximum influenceable wallet-
| connected eyeballs; quality was at best secondary.
|
| In contrast, look at what's happened to TV since then.
| We're in a golden age. [1] Why? Many reasons, but a key one
| is that people are now paying for TV directly. To Netflix
| and Hulu and HBO and all the other paid streaming efforts,
| you're the customer, not the product being sold to somebody
| else. Now they have a strong incentive to make things that
| you don't just tolerate but love.
|
| Microsoft in particular has a history of monopolistic
| behavior that has been harmful to the industry (e.g., [2],
| [3]). Are these developer tools awesome just because
| Microsoft is run by nice, generous people? I'd say instead
| they correctly recognize that if they want to regain some
| of their lost market power, they're going to have to
| compete with the existing tools, many of which are quite
| good. Why are they good? I'd say it's partly because smart
| people have built a strong business [4] making those tools.
| If Microsoft manages to eliminate the competition, they'll
| lose the incentive to build good stuff, just like they have
| in the past.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Television_
| (2000...
|
| [2] https://eev.ee/blog/2020/02/01/old-css-new-css/
|
| [3] http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoic
| epape...
|
| [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21796793
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed response.
|
| I can definitely see where you're coming from. In fact,
| for VS Code, I believe they collect quite a bit of
| metrics on your usage of the product through telemetry,
| so it's definitely not "free" in the sense of "nothing
| given" - essentially, your programming and usage habits
| of the program are being sent to MS every second.
|
| Re: the case of VS Code eliminating competition and MS
| losing the inventive to build good stuff, I think the
| core editor engine being open source gives me hope that
| this won't happen like in the olden days of MS. But of
| course, still a risk.
| colordrops wrote:
| Let's just hope they don't only maintain this online editor and
| deprecate the desktop install.
| edaemon wrote:
| Considering the desktop install is an Electron app I wouldn't
| think the two would diverge that much.
| colordrops wrote:
| If they don't release the code for the cloud
| implementation, it could diverge.
| saagarjha wrote:
| That sounds quite unlikely.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Doesn't to me (they might not deprecate it but they will
| simply stop putting resources into it at which point it
| turns into maintenance mode). As another posted pointed out
| the Facebook links, companies would love remote IDE tooling
| hosted on their premise so it can be an easy way to remove
| overhead on onboarding and tighten security more.
|
| For monorepos, it might work pretty well.
| meysholdt wrote:
| > would love remote IDE tooling hosted on their premise
| so
|
| sounds exactly like what Gitpod self-hosted is for:
| https://www.gitpod.io/blog/gitpod-self-hosted-0.4.0/
| searchableguy wrote:
| Yeah but does it come with github or azure enterprise
| package?
|
| No.
| jankeromnes wrote:
| This sounds like good feedback. What do you mean by
| "github or azure enterprise package"?
|
| I think Gitpod Self-Hosted was successfully installed on
| GCP, AWS, and Azure, and we're working on documenting the
| process.
|
| It also works with self-managed GitHub and GitLab
| installations (with Bitbucket coming soon).
| vlunkr wrote:
| > if not the best
|
| Them's fightin' words. But on a more serious note, I think 50%
| is a massive overestimation. We haven't seen pricing. Unless MS
| is willing to take a huge loss on this there's no way it will
| be free. We all know the resources required to run a modern web
| app in development mode. I can certainly see this being useful
| if you happen to be away from your dev machine, or if you just
| want to contribute to something without setting up the whole
| environment, but not as a full-time solution. Especially
| considering github is known to have outages. You'll really be
| SOL then.
| crdrost wrote:
| MS may indeed be willing to take a "huge loss" on this. It
| may dwarf the added revenue from other sources.
|
| So like I don't know your particular context but I imagine
| MS's moves would seem surprising for developers, say, at
| startups. Whereas if you work at an IT adjoint to a
| mechanical contractor it might make more sense. What's at
| stake is that MS might be ramping up to some bigger
| announcement, "GitHub Cloud" or so, where you pay some fee
| for the cloud hosting and the sales pitch is, "imagine that
| you can fix a bug from a bug report in a non-crappy editor
| like VS Code, do a quick code review and push a button which
| will run your tests, canary deploy, then version it and push
| it live -- we take care of all that infra, you just pay for
| the Azure hosting." If you give half of that for free to
| everybody, you nominally "lose" but you increase the adoption
| rate of a separate revenue machine, which makes up for it.
|
| A similar strategy was used by Microsoft to make their
| initial profits with Windows. There it was "you don't have to
| worry about the hardware specs -- we have already worked all
| of those out and all of them work with Windows." The key
| point in both is to say, "what are people seeking out, at the
| same time as they are seeking out my product?" and then to
| either give people a lot of freedom or a really easy option.
| You would rather take one pill that is carefully engineered
| to have the right omega-3 balance to stave off depression AND
| is a good probiotic AND has all of your daily vitamins, than
| to have to bother with a separate fish oil pill and probiotic
| and multivitamin. Focusing on product "complements" is often
| a really good strategy.
| JoyrexJ9 wrote:
| I don't think anyone would suggest this a full time
| replacement for your dev environment and IDE
| topkai22 wrote:
| There is preview pricing available for VS Code Spaces, which
| is almost the same thing. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
| us/pricing/details/visual-stu...
|
| The estimated cost for a full time developer to use the
| system is $23.30/month or roughly $280 a year. That's quite
| competitive- my "portable" workstation costs north of $2k and
| has a 3 year life span, so the "yearly" cost is $666. The
| benefits of being able to get use cheaper dev terminals in
| the general case could pay for itself, even before you get to
| the benefits of having a common environment.
|
| Also, you can self host for free. 50% is an over estimate
| (I've never seen 50% of developers agree to ANYTHING), but
| broad adoption looks highly likely.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| While VS Code is definitely good in general, and first choice
| for languages like JavaScript, I find it really hard to compare
| it to JetBrains PyCharm and GoLand (understanding GoLand has no
| free version).
|
| The debugging and refactoring experiences for Go and Python in
| VSCode feel slow, awkward to set up and configure and just
| generally tacked-on.
|
| I have gotten the PyCharm professional and GoLand licensed
| through my employer but I will 100% be paying for them out of
| my own pocket if I ever lose that.
| Polylactic_acid wrote:
| I used to use rubymine a few years ago and maybe I just
| wasn't using it right but I can do all the stuff in rubymine
| in vs code. The only thing I'm missing is being able to look
| through the code for gems.
| exdsq wrote:
| I think VSCode sets a really good level across all languages
| (even more esoteric ones like Idris) however it can't compete
| with IDEs essentially dedicated to a tech stack like PyCharm
| or Visual Studio.
| dan_quixote wrote:
| I've found I love JetBrains IDEs when I'm operating as a one-
| language power-user. But the last few years I find myself
| needing to use 2-3 languages in the same day (several more if
| you include markup "languages"). VSCode has become my editor
| of choice for local dev and vim for remote dev/debug.
| sswezey wrote:
| I use IntelliJ with the various language plugins for this
| reason. It allows me to use the same setup for all my
| languages. Granted, I do get the full license through my
| employer, but I think it's worth it even if my company
| didn't pay for it.
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| This is exactly my current situation. In one day I can end
| up writing in up to 4 languages (Go, Python, C, C++) and
| having one editor, with one set of settings for editing,
| and all the customization available in a single
| settings.json file, is just too good to give up for
| language-specific IDE's, especially ones that require
| yearly subscriptions.
| eloff wrote:
| I pay for the full JetBrains subscription. While I still use
| vscode for typescript and rust, I use JetBrains for anything
| else. It's one of those no brainer purchases that pays for
| itself within a month.
|
| Programmers create enormous value. If you can get even small
| single digit percentage improvements by leveraging better
| tooling, it pays for itself almost right away.
|
| I estimate conservatively I produce $500,000 in value a year.
| If I can eke out a 1% improvement in productivity that's
| worth $5000 a year.
|
| I think it's a big blind spot that developers don't invest
| enough in.
| fierarul wrote:
| Many vendors do think like this when they start their offer
| with 'how much is your time worth'? Indeed, your tool might
| save me 1 hour but it's not necessarily worth the price.
|
| On complex codebases though I mostly need the IDE just to
| navigate code. Anything released in the past decade knows
| how to index some classes, jump around and do 'find usage'.
|
| I agree that tooling most definitely helps, starting with
| your office, your chair, your hardware and your software
| config. You could also get 1% out of sleeping more I think.
| eloff wrote:
| Chair, desk, distraction free environment, fast computer,
| fast internet, multiple screens, consistently good sleep,
| diet, and exercise. Stable emotional environment
| (relationships). You could easily get better than 1% from
| each of those.
|
| Software tools, keyboard shortcuts, libraries, frameworks
| and saas software are also good targets to optimize.
| palerdot wrote:
| > I estimate conservatively I produce $500,000 in value a
| year
|
| Do you actually earn this amount per year? Or, is this just
| a projection of what you think the value of code you write
| is?
| [deleted]
| actuator wrote:
| I think he was talking about the value he generates, so
| possibly something like revenue/profit per employee kind
| of thing. For example, FB and Google make more than $1M
| revenue per employee. You can go more granular and look
| at the impact of your team or yourself as well.
|
| But can be his comp as well, these are not unheard[1] of
| numbers.
|
| [1] https://levels.fyi
| eloff wrote:
| Yes, I'm talking about value. My comp is less than that
| figure. There are some developers with total comp like
| that though.
| wry_discontent wrote:
| You can never earn the amount of value you produce. Your
| employer can't survive if they hire you for that amount.
| enitihas wrote:
| Yup, VSCode isn't comparable to IntelliJ or the rest at all
| for anything other than Typescript. IntelliJ offers a bunch
| of life saving refactorings. Want to extract a new method?
| Ctrl+Alt+M. The exact same shortcut works in every language,
| with almost the same semantics as much as possible. Intellij
| can do context aware autocompletion (Ctrl+Shift+Space).
|
| I use vscode for lightweight file editing. But for any long
| term project, it doesn't offer anything over Jetbrains
| products.
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| I've been using VS Code's Go and Python plugins for
| development for the last 2 years and I've never had any major
| issues. In fact, my experience continues to get better after
| every release.
|
| With the Go language server kicking off, Go development in VS
| Code is literally a breeze. Every single thing I'd want to do
| (format code, imports, run tests, run a particular test,
| debug a test, breakpoints, on and on) has been integrated
| into the VS Code plugin and it works pretty much seamlessly.
| I haven't used Goland since it's early release in 2016 or so,
| so I might be missing out on something, but it doesn't feel
| like it.
|
| I've never had a good experience with PyCharm. Again might be
| because I've using earlier releases and things have gotten
| better. But I'm at a point where I'm too comfortable with VS
| Code and have customized it to a point where I don't think
| it's worth it for me to switch to another editor, especially
| one that is tied to a particular language.
| petargyurov wrote:
| I made the transition from PyCharm to VSCode a couple of
| days ago and... it's not been smooth. Virtualenv doesn't
| automatically activate when I first open the workspace,
| pylint doesn't work yet VSCode thinks it's working and
| debugging just doesn't seem to work full stop.
|
| I need to get back to it and try to fix it because I do
| like VSCode as a whole.
| zomglings wrote:
| One thing that helps me managing Python environments in
| VS Code: I start VSCode from the command line with my
| virtual environment activated ("code -n .").
|
| With this, I rarely have issues with VSCode picking up my
| environment. Hope that is of some use to you.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| The issue with PyCharm is that it's actually quite hard to
| extend due to lack of proper documentation for their plugins.
|
| I love it but I sometimes think of something that contains
| less features while is easier to develop for would be a
| better choice.
| arodyginc wrote:
| Even for C# VSCode is way less useful than VisualStudio,
| which also has a free version (though doesn't run on Linux)
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| > Even for C#
|
| Weird way to put it, C# is expected to work better in
| VisualStudio, it's the standard/officially supported .NET
| IDE. For everything else I prefer VS Code personally.
| holtalanm wrote:
| While Visual Studio is powerful, I have ran into wierd
| behaviors within the IDE that just make it a chore to use.
| Personally, I've preferred C# on VSCode over Visual Studio
| so far.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I feel with .NET Core migrations the wind is shifting, at
| least for web development where VSCode is starting to be
| preferable to Visual Studio. VSCode isn't likely to get the
| WinForms or XAML visual designers any time soon, so Desktop
| apps will likely stay a Visual Studio niche, but even then
| I've found myself increasingly working in VSCode up until
| the point I need to do a UI tweak even with Desktop apps.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| JetBrains has Rider on Linux for C# and while not free, if
| you're already paying for other JetBrains IDE's, as many
| devs do, it's included. I just think there's still not much
| reason to do C# on Linux over say Kotlin if you want a huge
| ecosystem.
|
| I'd consider it if they come out with a cross-platform GUI
| toolkit for .NET Core/
| twodave wrote:
| Honestly, unless I'm working on a Windows machine, I find
| JetBrains Rider to be the best option for C# specifically.
| This is especially true if you like having your tests
| easily accessible from your IDE.
|
| That said, VSCode is still very nice for front-end pretty
| much universally, and it's also great for things like back-
| end Javascript/Typescript. I think Codespaces is really
| going to excel when it comes to things like NodeJS -> AWS
| Lambda. Make code changes, run "sls test", done.
| recursive wrote:
| > This is especially true if you like having your tests
| easily accessible from your IDE.
|
| I haven't used Rider, but I'm curious how it could be
| easier than the Visual Studio test explorer? It seems
| pretty convenient, and doesn't lack any obvious features
| I can think of.
| peteri wrote:
| I assume in part this is because the Rider test explorer
| is based on the one in Resharper.
|
| Some stuff it does better is things like running 64 bit
| and 32 bit tests at the same time, supporting both nUnit
| 2 & 3 without having to disable/enable the plugin. Mind
| you I spent some time with code in release mode trying to
| work why I couldn't debug a test last week.
|
| To be fair I hate what Resharper does for Visual Studio
| performance and a lot of the really useful refactoring in
| box these days so I no longer use it.
|
| I prefer to stick with Visual Studio but I know lots of
| folks who are happy with Rider. It's good for all of us
| when there is competition in paid for developer tools.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| Minor point: the Rider test explorer tells you why your
| tests aren't appearing. Visual Studio's test explorer
| will just say "You have no tests, try rebuilding your
| solution" even if you already rebuilt it.
| harikb wrote:
| Just an anecdote from a sample size of one - I had a recent
| situation where I had to nagivate and edit a code base that
| was a mix of Go, C++, and JS. And I had a paid IntelliJ
| Ultimate license. Long story short, VSCode did the
| best/fastest go-to-defintion like navigation given the
| constraints. IntelliJ separating Clion to a separate install
| is rather unfortunate. I can edit Java and Go together, but
| not C++
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| I think it's because CLion is a bit of a separate codebase,
| integrating with GDB and all that, rather than just a
| language plugin that's also sold as a separate IDE as is
| the case for other languages.
|
| This is also why the Rust plugin only has proper debugging
| capabilities in CLion.
| [deleted]
| underdeserver wrote:
| Being able to connect, do the work, run tests and everything
| without needing a strong laptop sounds like a good solution for
| people who like to travel.
| iddan wrote:
| The more Microsoft move from Azure to GitHub the better
| AaronFriel wrote:
| Where do you think these VMs are hosted? :)
|
| I hope they allow BYO-remote backend for compliance reasons.
| This feature seems amazing but I cannot use it.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| We do!
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/online/how-
| to/...
|
| (I work on Azure but not on this product)
| AaronFriel wrote:
| I'm aware of the product, I'd like to know if there plans
| to integrate these two offerings (e.g.: click on GitHub
| CodeSpace and connect to my _personal_ remote server as
| opposed to one on Azure) and if there will be any better
| approaches for IT/Ops security focused folks to configure
| these en masse. The current approach is untenable, each
| user has to log in and set up a VS Remote environment
| individually, personally, and if I'm rolling this out to a
| team that's just not an option.
| ethanpil wrote:
| I see this as a major competition to Repl.it they have had GitHub
| integration for some time, but it's clunky in my opinion...
| clktmr wrote:
| I can see why this is interesting from a project manager's
| perspective. But why would I as a developer want this, let alone
| pay for it? Isn't this the "developing in a browser" nightmare
| everybody was joking about a few years ago?
|
| Maybe this will work for developing web applications which are
| executed on a remote machine by design, but everything else?
| kanishkdudeja wrote:
| This will probably affect sales of beefier Macs too. Why do you
| need a beefy machine when all compilation / intelligence is
| streamed from the cloud?
| slig wrote:
| That doesn't solve the problem of having to deal with Windows
| 10 or a laptop running Linux.
| vackosar wrote:
| Once they have all the coding sessions recorded they can finally
| replace those pesky devs /jk. But seriously, is there anything in
| the conditions about ability to record coding sessions of say
| open source devs?
| desmap wrote:
| OT: For those who like to have VS Code's features in an super
| responsive console environment: Check out coc.vim for nvim. It's
| a masterpiece.
| dmacewen wrote:
| I wonder if it's usable from an iPad. I haven't tried an online
| ide before, but if it works well it could be a great mobile
| development tool.
|
| It would be awesome if this could be setup as a backend for vim
| as well. Given how well Coc.vim integrates with VSCode tooling,
| I'm cautiously optimistic.
| michaelmior wrote:
| What do you mean by "a backend for vim"? I use vim almost
| exclusively for coding but I'm not really sure what you mean
| here.
| dmacewen wrote:
| Backend may have been the wrong word, but they mention being
| able to connect to your codespace from VSCode running on your
| computer. It would be cool if you could connect to your
| codespace from vim running on your computer in the same way.
| sbarre wrote:
| I've been self-hosting VS Code Server (
| https://github.com/cdr/code-server ) and using it from Chrome
| on my iPad with a keyboard and mouse when I'm on the road..
|
| If this is the same or similar approach, then it should work
| just fine.
|
| If the pricing for Codespaces is reasonable, I'm going to move
| to that for sure. It's been kind of a hassle to keep my self-
| hosted setup running properly.
| dawson wrote:
| This tweet from GitHub's lead designer would suggest so!
|
| https://twitter.com/notdetails/status/1258070699165585410
|
| ... also this tweet from another GitHub product designer
|
| https://twitter.com/mschoening/status/1258069269260038144
| design wrote:
| Hey, the first tweet is mine. Codespaces work pretty great on
| an iPad. We're going to be making improvements to the
| experience here as we get to GA but we know it's a scenario
| everyone is really excited about.
| alberth wrote:
| Is the screenshot of Codedpaces from your iPad or macOS?
| Because that looks a lot like safari on macOS.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/notdetails/status/12580706991655
| 8...
| design wrote:
| It's a mockup in macOS safari, but I'll tweet a video of
| it running on my iPad at some point
| mcolyer wrote:
| That's correct it's usable from an iPad during the beta. There
| are a few known issues but we're planning on addressing those
| so that we can support this workflow (I work as the product
| lead on Codespaces).
| _ph_ wrote:
| Seems you are about to finally turn the iPad into a good
| development device :)
| dmacewen wrote:
| Wow, great to hear!
| saagarjha wrote:
| Does it work with the software keyboard? I seem to recall
| Monaco not really supporting mobile.
| mcolyer wrote:
| I haven't specifically tried it, but I think it would be
| challenging given how much screen real estate the keyboard
| takes.
| dvtrn wrote:
| Super excited to hear this, I had the exact same question
| reading the page. Any chance you'd be willing to slip us a
| peak on when we could reasonably (even a Q _x_ ballpark) on
| when Beta begins?
| mcolyer wrote:
| The beta signup list is available today
| https://github.com/features/codespaces and we'll add people
| in the order they sign up.
| davesque wrote:
| It's a neat idea and kudos to them for executing on this.
| However, it also triggers my spidey sense a bit. It makes me
| concerned about a far-flung future in which people who opt-out of
| the VSCode integration get a sub-optimal experience. Who knows if
| it will go this way but it may happen very slowly and without
| anyone noticing over a period of years. Corporate strategies
| often trend this way.
| boramalper wrote:
| Final nail in the coffin of Atom, adieu.
| jariel wrote:
| Can someone explain how 'build' is done with the obvious
| targetting of platforms and build configs etc? Does the build
| happen locally? On a rented server? Serverless?
| tango12 wrote:
| This is going to be amazingly useful.
|
| It's also some pretty serious vertical integration for
| Github/Microsoft!
|
| IDE: Github Source control + collaboration: Github CI/CD: Github
| Hosting: Github + Azure (with docker and azure functions that
| experience is pretty much already there technically?)
| ksec wrote:
| One of the hardest part getting anyone into Programming is
| actually setting up their Dev environment. ( You have many
| different platform, OS version or other compatibles issues...
| etc. And most student dont have clue about any of these ) You
| then have to teach them basic Git ( Github ) usage.
|
| Cloud9 could be great but hasn't gotten any traction apart from
| using it for some tutorials.
|
| This Codespaces brings the best of both world and kill two birds
| with one stone.
|
| The next step is Azure, hopefully they could have an Amazon
| Lightsail equivalent that is simple to understand and deploy
| without scaring beginners away.
| jpsim wrote:
| Is there a list of supported languages or environments for this
| yet?
| rkagerer wrote:
| This feels like a step toward a contemporary "VB6" in the cloud.
| Avi-D-coder wrote:
| This is great. We all knew it was coming, but I wish they hadn't
| axed xray.
|
| Has vscode performance improved in recent history? Are there any
| plans to replace hot code paths with Rust or wasm? Has modal
| editing improved? I'm not against using vscode, but even with
| codespaces it's a hard sell.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| (vscode does use ripgrep to power part of their search)
| atarian wrote:
| This is a really good idea, however I think it's somewhat marred
| by the pricing structure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
| gb/pricing/details/visual-stu...
|
| There should be a free tier as well as monthly options.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Hypothetically, say I wanted to build, I don't know, a new
| spreadsheet that ran Python, runs on macOS and Linux. I hope it
| will give Excel a run for its money. Since Excel is so
| disappointing outside Windows.
|
| Now I know Microsoft has a long history of safeguarding trade
| secrets, they were always very aggressive in this regard, from
| the beginning, the Xerox Parc days, and they still are. They
| state in their Investor Report that in Research & Development,
| they safeguard trade secrets, and are a world leader in patent
| pursuit [1].
|
| Surely I don't need to worry that this platform for online
| development, tied to my source code, is not just another step
| towards making it easier for them to have a sneak peak into what
| I'm building? I know they can see my code in Github, but as a
| developer I know source code is one thing, but getting code to
| compile and run is a lot more work (on a very big project). This
| would make it even easier to dip into project runtimes, since IDE
| and environment settings are stored online now.
|
| I mean, there's no way that strategically, they would
| aggressively try to bulwark their own business lines, by snooping
| on competing tech, and using insights to help strategically
| direct their patent lawyers, advising them on who to go after an
| how. And anyway, even if they did do that occasionally, there's
| no way they would bully me unjustly, I would surely deserve it.
| Right?
|
| [1] https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar13/financial-
| re...
| bigbossman wrote:
| Amazing, this finally turns the iPad into a legit remote dev
| machine. No need to setup a DO VPC either.
| blondin wrote:
| nice! thought about an environment like that. would be great to
| have python, golang and c/cpp runtimes.
| ccktlmazeltov wrote:
| What I've always wanted was to be able to easily browse code on
| Github:
|
| * a file tree (do-able via the octotree browser plugin)
|
| * clickable functions (Github is doing this on some projects in
| some languages I've noticed)
|
| * caller tree. Xcode is one of the only navigator doing this, you
| can see the whole hierarchy of callers and go through them
| easily.
|
| What we're getting is something really cool, but it does not
| bring the caller tree function. It looks like this:
|
| https://holko.pl/public/images/xcode-search/call-hierarchy.p...
| voxic11 wrote:
| vscode supports call hierarchy searches, but its not supported
| by all languages yet. Support was recently added for java
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/java/java-on-visual-studio-co...
| ccktlmazeltov wrote:
| I've never seen this in any languages that I use (obviously
| Java is not in that list), is there a list somewhere?
| ThouYS wrote:
| Dear Diary, today I saw the future
| iamwil wrote:
| From Microsoft's point of view, it makes sense to merge Visual
| code with Github, as both are their properties. And it walks into
| the realm of repl.it and darklang, who are demonstrating people
| want to shorten the repl loop.
|
| But I'm still wary of Microsoft, and remember them from the 90's.
| Completely dominant and ruthless. Even though it's new people
| now.
|
| I can see them embracing open source development workflow,
| branching to eat up everything that has to do with your
| development workflow. Once Microsoft wins the ecosystem of open
| source developer workflow is when they'll start to leverage it,
| using it as lead gen for the lucrative cloud/dev ops services.
|
| They're playing a long game to beat Amazon AWS, and to beat off
| any new startups with shorter repls.
| mrits wrote:
| in 5 years: "Please take a break from your coding and watch
| this short advertisement"
| axelfontaine wrote:
| Exactly as I predicted 2 years ago:
| https://twitter.com/axelfontaine/status/1007887082151469056?...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-05-06 23:00 UTC)