GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#551

Post by Buttons840 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:04 AM UTC

kjksf wrote: post #385

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…

If they do, the competition is just a click away: https://www.gitpod.io/

How about moving all our code off GitHub while we're at it?

In this worst case scenario (which hasn't happened yet), I'm sure GitHub would expect the good will of open source projects and contributors while simultaneously being the boot on their face in the workplace.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#552

Post by simonw » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:05 AM UTC

kansface wrote: post #300

simonw wrote: post #134

The amount of time I've seen lost to engineers spinning up (or fixing) development environments is staggering. This kind of thing is going to save SO much money. (I've run a team responsible for the tooling for a company's development environments in the past so this hits really close to home.)

Alternatively, they could have spent this money on fixing the dev stack. Maybe this was more politically viable.

What do you mean by fixing the dev stack?

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#553

Post by amatecha » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:07 AM UTC

maccard wrote: post #452

blacktriangle wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github does not need to be open source. Open source needs to pull its head out of its collective ass and not hand over its entire workflow to private companies. Github may be the single greatest execution of embrace/extend/extinguish in computing history.

Where are we seeing the extend or extinguish with GitHub? It's been 3.5 years and GitHub is just as compatible with git as it has ever been.

You know how they added Github CLI[0], right? There may be a time where you must use Github CLI instead of a "standard" git client to interact with Github projects. That would be the "extinguish" phase. Right now they have embraced and are extending (such as with Github CLI).

[0] https://cli.github.com/

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#554

Post by dcreager » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:07 AM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #463

selykg wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article, that's an option with Github's code spaces setup. > Visual Studio Code is great. It’s the primary tool GitHub.com engineers use to interface with codespaces. But asking our Vim and Emacs users to commit to a graphical editor is less great. If Codespaces was our future, we had to bring everyone along. snip > From there, GitHub engineers can run Vim, Emacs, or even ed if they so desire.

I did not understand that part. Every heavy Emacs or vim user have its own customizations of editor. How does it work with shared image?

The repo owner gets to define the base Docker image that’s used in the codespace. And then it also looks for a dotfiles repo under your user account, which you can use to install all of your personal customizations. You can see mine at https://github.com/dcreager/dotfiles

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#555

Post by dcreager » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:09 AM UTC

Emigre_ wrote: post #434

io wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quotee here. I agree! I use tmux and vim via ssh for github.com development in Codespaces.

Interesting… Can you use Neovim? Can you persist you custom vimrc config and plugins between sessions?

Yes, I use neovim myself! Codespaces looks for a dotfiles repo under your user account, which you can use to install any personal customizations. Mine, which installs a bunch of neovim plugins and configs, is here: https://github.com/dcreager/dotfiles

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#556

Post by dcreager » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:12 AM UTC

gray_-_wolf wrote: post #505

FlyingSnake wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think people like not having their physical machine tied to their dev environment. I'm curious to know if this statement is true. Most experienced developers these days have a regular desk and a chair where they like to code and focus. How prevalent is the move-and-code scenario?

It's not just that. There is also the matter of laptop getting broken (we all have proper backups, right? right?), stolen, ... So I do see the appeal in thin client. My only issue is that the experience his closely tied to latency, so sometimes working over ssh is... irritating. Especially on mobile connection.

It’s all Docker images under the covers, so our devs also have the option of downloading and running that image locally instead of in a Codespaces VM. That was always possible before, of course, but Codespaces gave us the impetus to invest the effort in Dockerizing the dev environment more rigorously.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#557

Post by zamalek » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:15 AM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #490

zamalek wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been playing around with a homegrown version of this. It's really not that hard: just set up a docker context to your home lab server and use VSCode remote containers. I've been able to remove WSL from my PC: Docker desktop was gouging itself on resources. I can now also shut down my desktop and continue exactly where I was on my laptop, and visa-versa. I don't have to pull WIP commits back and forth between the…

oh right, my home lab server, that must be around here somewhere...

They aren't as expensive as you'd expect[1][2] ($70-$200). Hell, you could use a RPi for many use cases.

In my case, my homelab is my laptop (which I connect to from my desktop). I don't actually have a server blade lying around (although those can also be relatively cheap when big cloud upgrades their servers).

[1]: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=dell+optiplex+3040+micr... [2]: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=intel+nuc&_udhi=200&_ud...

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#558

Post by hamandcheese » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:15 AM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #544

hamandcheese wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see with a remote filesystem is that you’ll still need tools for editor integrations - language servers, formatters, linters, etc. Sure, you can install those locally too, but by then you are losing many of the benefits of a cloud environment.

Go try VSCode remote. These are all solved problems. The extensions run headlessly on the server, and the client does little more than render the interface. Switching between machines is seamless with settings sync, workspace recommended extensions, etc. You won’t find many people who started using VSC remote dev and then abandoned it to go back to local. Once you’ve got it working, which is a pretty easy feat, it’s…

Yes, I am aware. I was responding to this bit:

> This seems preferable - the editor runs on your local machine with low latency, but you still run tests on the cloud machine.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#559

Post by resters » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:18 AM UTC

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…

Yes, and that is how they will train the AI that will replace us all. It's a brilliant strategy, so I can't help but play along.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#560

Post by vanpythonista » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 12:20 AM UTC

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.

Microsoft Outlook/Office 365 costs money, but they still analyze your activity and report so called "productivity score". Maybe not sell, but I have no doubt they will analyze the data if they can.