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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

#371

Post by banana_giraffe »

lkbm wrote: post #339
tiffanyh wrote: post #90

> "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)

If spinning up/down is fast+smooth (e.g., no reconfiguring stuff each time), you could drop that down to ~40h/week taking you to under $500/month. Still pricey, but combined with not having to pay the ~70% markup another commenter mentioned, it could be under $2,000/year.

Add on top of that, spinning down should be automatic. I've worked on bespoke platforms like this where it wasn't. Devs would often forget and/or be more willing to run long running tasks after work hours. The net result was pretty much having to assume an instance would be online 24x7 unless there were at least gentle pokes to disable instances.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#372

Post by bratbag »

wolverine876 wrote: post #353
hackthememes wrote: post #31

So you're telling me that the next GitHub outage could take out my dev environment and give me an afternoon off? Time to convince management that we need to switch to Codespaces!

There are different risks, but there is not necessarily more risk. Does Codespaces have lower or higher than the availability risks of your current environment?

My current environment is my laptop, which I would also need to access codespaces.

So by extension, codespaces is more risky than my current environment.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#373

Post by yellowbanana »

bogwog wrote: post #358

Serious question: if I were to use this, would Microsoft collect analytics on me (code written, keystrokes, mouse movements, sleep/work schedule, productivity metrics, etc) and monetize that data by using it to build some AI product like Copilot, or build a productivity dashboard so managers can fire people for not being productive enough (like Xsolla did), use it to serve me ads, or do some stupid/irresponsible/unet…

The fact that they will be able to do it, is problem, we should not put ourselves in position to rely on their future morality.

Github at this point needs to be open source, atleast then they would be an easier way out.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#374

Post by TimTheTinker »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #326

The feature page for Codespaces reads less like an IDE enhancement and more like “docker doesn’t work well on MacOS so just code in a browser so we can spin up a local environment quicker”. Or I don’t know, maybe try using a Linux laptop instead.

> Or I don’t know, maybe try using a Linux laptop instead.

This is an underrated, excellent option, especially for solo devs and small shops.

Or run a Linux VM in Parallels Pro with startup-on-login, shared networking, and port forwarding.

In my opinion, Apple should build a virtualized Linux dev environment into macOS (a sort of Linux Subsystem for Mac). That would be so helpful... or Microsoft could build a Linux distro with a next-gen window manager and full support for Windows apps. Either way and I'd be all-in.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#375

Post by q-rews »

pimterry wrote: post #271

Interestingly, the intro docs specifically recommend using Chromium for Codespaces: > For the best experience with Codespaces, we recommend using a Chromium-based browser, like Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. (from https://docs.github.com/en/codespaces/developing-in-codespac... ) Makes sense coming from Microsoft, but it'll be fun to see if/how that affects the ongoing Chromium/Safari battles (and Firefox, to a less…

This is because it’s based around VS Code, which is an Electron app, which uses Chromium.

In short they never tested it outside it because they never had to. Only now it’s become available as a “web app” with a URL.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#376

Post by 908B64B197 »

gosukiwi wrote: post #91

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…

> 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.

Any good CS/Engineering program should have the students build and use a dev environment they configured to their liking.

If the only dev environment used is wrapped into some IDE magic I would be very skeptical of the program.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#378

Post by SamuelAdams »

donny2018 wrote: post #367
bogwog wrote: post #358

Serious question: if I were to use this, would Microsoft collect analytics on me (code written, keystrokes, mouse movements, sleep/work schedule, productivity metrics, etc) and monetize that data by using it to build some AI product like Copilot, or build a productivity dashboard so managers can fire people for not being productive enough (like Xsolla did), use it to serve me ads, or do some stupid/irresponsible/unet…

I don’t know if this is a good indicator or not, but Codespaces costs money. So there is a non-zero probability that you are not the product.

Businesses can both charge money for a service and sell / analyze user data. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#379

Post by echelon »

AYBABTME wrote: post #290
echelon wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Codespaces doesn't magically solve that problem. You have to put in the work and ongoing maintenance effort either way.

Yeah but if before we had MxN complexity: - M: number of devs with their own machine - N: number of projects with their own way of bringing up dev env Using stuff like Codespace reduces M to 1.

There are dozens of tools and strategies to reduce M to 1. Codespaces is just one of them.

Codespaces has the disadvantage of turning you into a renter.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#380

Post by randyrand »

bratbag wrote: post #372
wolverine876 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are different risks, but there is not necessarily more risk. Does Codespaces have lower or higher than the availability risks of your current environment?

My current environment is my laptop, which I would also need to access codespaces. So by extension, codespaces is more risky than my current environment.

If you've never had these issues, this product is probably not for you.

The question is, how much time do you spend on dev environment issues per year?

When I was at one of the FAANGs, our dev enviroment took about 1hr to install, and you had to redo it everytime you switched platform / version (about every week).

We spent ~50 hours per year managing our local dev enviroment. probably more in reality.

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