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

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#591

Post by oldsecondhand » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

pdpi wrote: post #584

maccard wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic any proprietary product that provides an interface with an open source tool is guilty. I think accusing MS of EEE in this case is a huge stretch; GitHub is a commercial product that uses a popular open source tool with 100% compatibility (that I'm aware of) and actively participates in the development and features of that tool. When Ms start implementing extensions to git that only work with GitHub, we…

I can’t think of a single person I’ve worked with in the last 10 years who understands the difference between vanilla git and GitHub. Nobody really understands why pull requests are named that way, or that it’s possible to have very different workflows to what GitHub offers. I don’t know that this is the result of a deliberate strategy by GitHub, but by any metric the extend step is a resounding success.

GitHub isn't the only one using pull requests, Stash and Gitlab does too. Pull requests have just become standard workflow without it ever being part of git.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#592

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 2:47 AM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #571

hamandcheese wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah I see – apologies, I read your comment too quickly. Something I miss with remote development is being able to use graphical Git clients like Sublime Merge on my working directory. I don’t want to setup SSHFS just to make that work, and I’m sure performance wouldn’t be great anyway.

[deleted]

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#593

Post by pm90 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #552

kansface wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I believe the OP is referring to "local stack" i.e. being able to run a single command e.g. `make up` (if you're using makefiles) to spawn a local environment and run a "local" version of the site i.e. serving on localhost.

Having such scripts enables one to quickly setup a local environment to make changes and test them before submitting a Pull Request.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#594

Post by fridif » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:04 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #574

fridif wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably, but I am more likely to be fired for not doing work

You might get fired plus sued.

This is a sentiment that is very typical among Singaporeans. I suspect it has something to do with the political/business climate over there.

While the USA is also litigation happy, it actually takes an incredibly high amount of deliberate destruction for an employer to succeed in suing an employee.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#595

Post by delfinom » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:06 AM UTC

015a wrote: post #190

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)

That pricing is a ~70% markup over standard Azure rates. Companies typically buy laptops with an assumed 3 year lifespan; so, let's assume a high-end $3000 laptop, that would be ~$83/month. Of course, you need a computer to access Github Codespaces, so this isn't saving all of that money. Maybe companies can cut some costs by buying cheaper laptops? Or if you want a more apples-to-apples; a Lenovo ThinkStation P620 r…

>I understand maintaining dev machines isn't the easiest thing in the world. I have never once worked anywhere where it was such a problem that the company would justify tens of thousands of dollars in spend.

Look, this is yet another product targeting naive VC funded startups. Milking the cows until they bleed.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#596

Post by pm90 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:06 AM UTC

bern4444 wrote: post #329

anyonecancode wrote: post #321

I feel I'm swimming against the current of contemporary dev practices, but I actually believe trying to run as much of your apps and development locally is important. Not exclusively, but at least from time to time I think shutting off your network connection and seeing what happens is important. It flushes out all sorts of assumptions, especially around dependencies, you may not have realized you had. If you at leas…

My job now has no ability to run our code locally and its terrible. I work on APIs which at the end of the day is an HTTP server making and responding to requests. When I make a change its impossible to test locally which is terrible. The same issue applies to serverless technologies (at least last when I used them). It was extremely difficult to run serverless services locally, debug issues etc. Having the cloud is…

> It just gives you so much more control. You're not locked into a specific editor or tool chain, you can integrate with whatever other local tools might be specific to you, etc

My experience aligns very strongly with this. A local stack lets you add debug/print statements anywhere. There is no "magic", you can see the thing run on your machine. The freedom is unmatched.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#597

Post by lkrubner » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

I realize my reaction is, in a sense, completely off-topic, but what I notice most is that they didn’t think Docker solves this problem for them. In fact, I believe this is the first time in 4 years where I’ve seen a company try to solve this problem without making Docker the center of their effort (though they bundle the nightly build in Docker, it seems a minor part of their strategy, and could have easily been a traditional VM instead). They are being creative. The crucial thing is they didn’t feel this problem was solved by Docker, so they did something original and, in some sense, this amounts to a vote-of-no-confidence on the question “Does Docker solve our development problems?” A question that, back in 2016, most people thought Docker would solve. It is possible that 5 years from now, when we look back, we will remember this as the moment when the momentum and focus and energy of the tech industry began to shift in new directions. Because, certainly, for the last 5 years most of the tech industry has been asking “How will Docker solve all the problems of development environments.”

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#598

Post by manigandham » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:24 AM UTC

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #482

slownews45 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a business is paying for this product, then THEY (not you) are the customer. And in that context - yes, Microsoft may be asked or build a product for managers to manage their workforce, particularly if remote. This could involve presence tracking, engagement tracking (ie, do you open alerts / read your bug reports) etc. One approach would be to monitor what management considers productive / successful employees an…

I really hope that if this happens, DPAs bring the hammer down on everyone involved (both MS and companies using it) in a useful timeframe (i.e. before it has become socially acceptable because "everyone is doing it" and there are no consequences).

You don't have the same rights to privacy when performing your job for a corporation, and everyone else is already doing it in other industries.

Just this week was a big story about how a call center provider (used by Apple and others) was forcing employees to install cameras in their own homes to monitor their remote work: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/big-tech-call-center-...

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#599

Post by FpUser » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #551

kjksf wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have projects on github because some of my clients requested it. My own projects stay off. Other than renting physical servers I do not use a single piece of software for my own business that forces me to subscribe and be online.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#600

Post by turtlebits » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #597

I realize my reaction is, in a sense, completely off-topic, but what I notice most is that they didn’t think Docker solves this problem for them. In fact, I believe this is the first time in 4 years where I’ve seen a company try to solve this problem without making Docker the center of their effort (though they bundle the nightly build in Docker, it seems a minor part of their strategy, and could have easily been a t…

This use case is a development machine on a VM.

Docker driven development is generally code on your host and run the app in a container. Considering their git pull takes 20 minutes, it makes sense to go the VM route.