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GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

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Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#21
post #17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has not been my experience. First, I work on lots of code bases and this is where a lot of the brittleness comes from. They don’t use the same versions of the same things. Second, C dependencies are a giant pain in the ass when you add the first problem above.

Meanwhile, on BSD UNIX derivatives, I can 'make world' since the dawn of time...

Ah yes, then there is the third big complexity. Some devs are on Mac, some windows, some Linux, and a few rare people on BSD.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#22
> My friends, I’m here to tell you I was a Codespaces skeptic before this started and now I am not. This is the way. ~@iolsen

I don't actually doubt that this (and the 4 other glowing employee quotes) are real, but even assuming they are, I can understand people remaining skeptical about the sample size of 5 being broadly representative of the 100s (1000s?) of engineers at the company.

Also slightly hilarious that "This is the way" is a Star Wars callback referring to a character blindly following dogma before eventually realising the error of their ways...

On the other hand, there's quite a few "hints" littered throughout the article that their current setup is a bit of a beast, so I can definitely imagine some engineers being relieved to be able to get such a behemoth off their physical laps/desks: I guess if the local development experience is sufficiently brittle & frustrating, any alternative may seem welcome.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#23

I would quit so fast if my company forced me to use a web IDE.

I'm in the GitHub Codespaces personal beta: counterintuitively, the UI/UX of Codespaces is as performant as VS Code on the desktop.

I also don't use VS Code usually. My personal preference is a JetBrains IDE, but my point is more engineers should be able to choose the environment they're most productive in.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the GitHub Codespaces personal beta: counterintuitively, the UI/UX of Codespaces is as performant as VS Code on the desktop.

I also don't use VS Code usually. My personal preference is a JetBrains IDE, but my point is more engineers should be able to choose the environment they're most productive in.

Jetbrains has a hosted-IDE pilot project: https://lp.jetbrains.com/projector/

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#28

I'm currently working on a huge codebase that takes forever to compile. I'd love to use Codespaces or a self hosted alternative so that I don't need to carry around a heavy i7 laptop. Being able to develop in the cloud from a browser opens up the possibility to develop from a thin Chromebook.

Isn't this option already available with CI/CD or Vim?

You can also use VS Code on a remote VM directory. Our devs do this.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#29
Is it just me or VSCode is dauntingly complex? There are so many configuration options and I often get lost in it.

I've been using Sublime Text for a decade and it has kept the scope creep to a minimum. I've also used JetBrains IDEs and while there is a massive amount of complexity, it is well organized I think. I just get anxiety from launching VSCode, may be it is because of not being familiar with it, I don't know.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#30

I would quit so fast if my company forced me to use a web IDE.

I'm in the GitHub Codespaces personal beta: counterintuitively, the UI/UX of Codespaces is as performant as VS Code on the desktop.

Doesn't VS Code essentially run in a browser anyway?
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