Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?

news.ycombinator.com

191–200 of 246 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?

#191

https://bunnyshell.com and k8s -- seems like a good way to get going quickly with new projects --

I work at Bunnyshell, so happy to see it mentioned here. Happy to share some more details:

Bunnyshell creates two types of CDEs:

- local IDE, code running in the cloud. The cool thing here is you get to use a local IDE (any IDE/editor you want), no lag, the user edits a local files and the files are synced in real time to the cloud environment. All editing on local, all execution in the cloud. Supports debuggers.

- remote IDE, code running in the cloud. When configured in this way, both the IDE and the execution happen in the cloud. No code on local.

The CDE is just one side of Bunnyshell, the other is provisioning environments on demand or automatically (eg. ephemeral environments on each PR). All these envs support remote development (if enabledd).

Our team makes heavy use of CDEs internally for actually building the product.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?

#192
post #50

I don't really see the appeal. We don't even use the same dev environments at work, some use vscode, others use pycharm or codeblocks or whatever. We have code locally, on github, on gitlab and in other places. Also I can't really say that I've heard anyone outside of this thread who is excited about this at all. I see people here have different ideas but personally I've never heard of it from anyone I work with or k…

The issues you listed are non-existent with Gitpod. You can point whatever editor at it, and work on code residing anywhere.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?

#193
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 64GB The cheapest instance I could find approached $1k USD per year without egress costs. If you can build all of that, why use EC2 over your own hardware? If you’re spinning up containers, why not use the dev’s workstation for that? You already paid for it, right?

How is buying a your dev a single top of the line expensive 64GB RAM MacBook equivalent to on-demand EC2 instances? Despite containers working locally, the ease of having a remote image with everything preinstalled is huge. Lots of large companies offer internal dev cloud environments - I’ve always found it to be a frictionless experience versus local setup at other companies.

Suppose you’re building a feature that requires $newlib as a dependency. How is that handled? Do you request the addition of $newlib and wait for a new remote image to be deployed for everyone before you can work on your feature branch?

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?

#194

I got a cheap Hetzner Auction server for all the work needs https://www.hetzner.com/sb . I use VS Code remote to work there. It's easier and more convenient than Codespaces (and I think cheaper). Has a lot of benefits like instantly sharing a web server with the outside world, ability to run my servers and bots continuously, ability to work from different computers seamlessly. It also functions in many random ways (e…

Is this how you work across the company?

no, but I had one employer reimbursing it (changed job since then). they were quite interested in this and might have actually implemented this for others, not sure

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?

#195
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 64GB The cheapest instance I could find approached $1k USD per year without egress costs. If you can build all of that, why use EC2 over your own hardware? If you’re spinning up containers, why not use the dev’s workstation for that? You already paid for it, right?

Spot instances actually make this manageably cheap!

Spot instances for dev environment???? "Your instance will be terminated in 1m" sounds like the new "Can't work; code is building"… haha

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?

#196
post #50

I don't really see the appeal. We don't even use the same dev environments at work, some use vscode, others use pycharm or codeblocks or whatever. We have code locally, on github, on gitlab and in other places. Also I can't really say that I've heard anyone outside of this thread who is excited about this at all. I see people here have different ideas but personally I've never heard of it from anyone I work with or k…

The issues you listed are non-existent with Gitpod. You can point whatever editor at it, and work on code residing anywhere.

Good to know but not really for us. Their cloud will not be able to access our internal network where most of our stuff lives. I'm sure it's configurable to some degree but is never going to happen.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?

#197
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost the same for me. The data center is a couple miles from my home and my home has fiber. It’s low latency, I almost never notice a difference from my device. Maybe if I used it for really large files but that’s not my thing. It’s nice keeping my local device crud free and low demand. Edit to add; cost me about $70/month depending on a few variables on collocation for a 4U. My same apps on AWS would cost 10x more…

Where are you colocating? Looking for one myself

I’d recommend you approach it from a hyperlocal perspective, find the local data center you think will be best for you then look up who is offering colo out of that data center. Then do some network testing. Maybe compare a couple data centers. The providers are going to vary in most cases. So I don’t recommend looking for a specific provider just because it works for me or someone else. You’ll get to pick your bandwidth provider too in many cases.

I like to make sure the network hop path to my home is as direct as possible. My ISP has a large presence in one of the local “backbone” data centers so that’s where I find the best results. But still do testing, it’s not all about location when it comes to latency. If you visit the data centers, or online, they often list names of colo providers. They’re often rather small shops and not large brands so going to be very location specific

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issues you listed are non-existent with Gitpod. You can point whatever editor at it, and work on code residing anywhere.

Good to know but not really for us. Their cloud will not be able to access our internal network where most of our stuff lives. I'm sure it's configurable to some degree but is never going to happen.

https://www.gitpod.io/dedicated

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using cloud dev environments (e.g. Codespaces/Replit) at work?

#200
Happy to chime in - Love the discussion ;-) Disclosure: I am the co-founder of Strong Network - a Swiss company. We are using and selling our own CDE solution.

My background is in cybersec and I worked at Snapchat after they acquired my previous (cybersec) startup - first time I saw the concept of CDEs, naturally I thought - can we combine productivity and security? This is what Ozrenko (my partner and ex Snap as well) and I decided to do.

Along with all CDE management functions, we designed infrastructure security mechanisms that are transparent to developers and that make their life easier (I and Oz are developers) - we realized that, we can expand the concept with a load of DevSecOps automation and eventually, we've hit very novel code security practices that we embedded in the environment (and filed patents on them).

Our security is mostly to keep developers chill while protecting the org (and reduce infrasec cost ;-) : protect all resource access credentials from leaking (phishing and malware), we provide data loss prevention (IDE, web apps), we detect secrets and prevent sprawling, we detect external code pasting in the code base, etc. All transparently and no hassle for the dev team - everybody gets free SSO to any resources!

Most importantly, we have hardened the platform at very complex organizations such as Broadcom, SwissRe, Niantic Labs and others with our self-deployed platform - you can imagine the difficulty of running efficiently across WAF, traffic proxies, VDIs and SASE. Oz is the man for that.

So in summary - we have today the most advanced CDE platform that provides both efficiency and security for all your resources and assets. We are a Swiss company working world-wide (greetings from Tokyo this week), so if you are motivated to join us (any function), please let me know!

Sadly, we have not chosen a codename for the platform yet.

Post reply on HN