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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

#101

> "So we moved to 32 core, 64 GB RAM VMs. By changing a single line of configuration, we upgraded every engineer’s machine." On GitHub, that instance type is $2.88/hour or $2,073 monthly per developer for a single instance. (Granted, that's running 24/7 but still - wow, that's expensive for a single instance)

Something tells me that a Microsoft company isn’t paying Azure RRP prices

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#102
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub isn't forcing anybody to use a web IDE. The most broadly used access interface is VSCode. Then there are heretics like me who choose to ssh in so we can use Vim. This is described in the article.

Do you have to drag your .vimrc and plugins along every time you set up a new code space? My vim setup is pretty bespoke, it would be annoying to have to set that up every time.

It's totally worth taking the time to sync your dotfiles via git. There's a little bit of maintenance involved whenever you make a config change on one system that you want to propagate elsewhere, but it pays off.

Personally, I just `git init && git remote add ...` in my home directory and have a .gitignore that ignores everything by default, so I have to `git add -f` whenever I want to sync a config. Submodules work well for `.vim/bundle/the-plugin`. It's also nice for syncing important zsh customizations like this one: https://github.com/MatrixManAtYrService/home2/blob/master/.z...

There are also other strategies: https://dotfiles.github.io/

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#103

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

I would be happy to let go of an employee who bank their employment on the preference of toolings. Hear me out: Toolings are, like the name suggests, a means to an end. If a web IDE is fast, works reasonably, and can continue improve itself. And the learning curve is friendly to engineers with different background and experience. Everyone should be comfortable to be nudged to use it. And if the tool additionally is a…

And I would be happy to end my employment at an employer that mandates what IDE you use. (I would not be surprised that GitHub forces me to use GitHub for development, or Asana uses Asana to track issues, this one is just too far...)

No hard feelings or anything. I spend 5-8 hours a day working in my IDE. That's a huge chunk of my life and it matters a lot to me to work how I want. I've also found getting this aspect of my worklife right greatly impacts my overall productivity.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#104

> "So we moved to 32 core, 64 GB RAM VMs. By changing a single line of configuration, we upgraded every engineer’s machine." On GitHub, that instance type is $2.88/hour or $2,073 monthly per developer for a single instance. (Granted, that's running 24/7 but still - wow, that's expensive for a single instance)

This was the thing that jumped out at me! I'm not sure how the VSCode application interacts with these to potentially put them to sleep, but dang that is $$$ for a dev machine at the scale github is operating at.

I guess lucky for them to be owned by Microsoft now and so that's just a cost of doing business. I have a hard time believing they could have even considered an approach like this if they were still paying for hardware out of pocket.

Kudos to the team for figuring it out though.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#105

Ugh, now not only you don't own your code ( ahem copilot cough ) you also don't own the tools to develop code. The direction the web is taking is worrisome. The issue is not so much senior devs, but new devs. If they start off with things like that, there' so much magic under the hood, they won't understand how anything works. They don't understand they don't own shit until it's too late. I remember when I first saw…

ownership issues aside, the "magic" under the hood is not a problem assuming it actually works. Its when the magic breaks, or works in unexpected ways, then it becomes a problem. Magic is also progress, and progress is usually good.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#106

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.

That's not counter intuitive at all: Desktop VS Code is a web app running in chromium.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does setting up a desktop IDE work?

Currently, VS Code is the primary method of connection to each Codespace, and we do not support other editors officially. If you’re looking to connect via SSH with your desktop IDE, we do have a workaround here: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-dev-containers/blob/main... -- and I use this regularly for Jupyter Notebooks. :)

So if I want to use IntelliJ or RubyMine, is there a workaround?

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#108

Ugh, now not only you don't own your code ( ahem copilot cough ) you also don't own the tools to develop code. The direction the web is taking is worrisome. The issue is not so much senior devs, but new devs. If they start off with things like that, there' so much magic under the hood, they won't understand how anything works. They don't understand they don't own shit until it's too late. I remember when I first saw…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#109
post #40

Just a couple of years ago some kid gained access to every repo on github. Now githubs code is going to be developed on an online platform, which works by sharing code others have uploaded. I have a feeling that this is not a good recipe.

This is very true and a risk with any cloud service. Ie if you make a app and want redundancy, the code is exposed not only by your own security defects, former employees etc, and each cloud provider you host on such as AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean etc. I think in practice the largest mitigation is the legal system, as its safe to assume your code already exists places you don't want it to.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#110

Ugh, now not only you don't own your code ( ahem copilot cough ) you also don't own the tools to develop code. The direction the web is taking is worrisome. The issue is not so much senior devs, but new devs. If they start off with things like that, there' so much magic under the hood, they won't understand how anything works. They don't understand they don't own shit until it's too late. I remember when I first saw…

jamstack is very fucked up to me, glad I'm not going crazy. you basically offload EVERYTHING to 3rd parties.
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