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

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#611

Post by tuxguy » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:36 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #598

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

woah, this is bonkers !

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#612

Post by robmsmt » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

brundolf wrote: post #541

greenyouse wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, this setup is super nice for personal work! Adding a raspberry pi as a jump box with wake on lan saves some money on electricity too. I've been using that with a big desktop computer instead of a server and it pretty much works for remote development while out of the house.

Yeah, I'm using an older desktop as my server. I'd like to set it up for out-of-house stuff, I just haven't gotten around to messing with port forwarding, static IP, etc, not to mention guarding against all the potential security issues

a way that I've found to do this securely is to have a small constantly running cloud server $5 pm with OpenVPN on it. Then have your server connect and join the VPN on both laptop and server. If it's configured properly you'll be able to get them to communicate

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#613

Post by MichaelMoser123 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 4:57 AM UTC

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #573

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 your employer decides that they need such an analytics dashboard, one that is spying on every keystroke, then they will have one. That one doesn't depend on you working on a laptop, or in a remote environment - the company owns and is administrating that laptop, and they can install everything they regard as necessary. Therefore the real question is if Codespaces is helping to get your job done; I guess that depen…

Upon re-examination: if github/microsoft is owning the analytics data gathered from monitoring the keystrokes, then they are a third party, and could possibly make that data available across time; so that a prospective employer can get a view on past performance of a candidate, or the new employer will have access to analytics data gathered on you while working at a previous company. Now that one has the potential to make the whole thing much more sinister. There might be a big difference between the situation where your current employer has a keylogger on you, as compared to the keylogger sitting in the cloud. Grandparent poster Bogwog has a solid argument here.

It all depends if the industry will act this way or not, I still hope that there is some level of desency left somewhere, because being too paranoid about all of it will not get me anyway either. Also the utility of all this analytics data is limited, for example they could possible get the 'number of lines of code' written by someone, but it is impossible to judge how essential all these lines of code were to the business. Also there would be a significant backlash, if they get too invasive on the privacy of developers. (that's the moment for the video where Steve Balmer is flipping out on stage and shouting 'developers' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY )

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#614

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 5:13 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #563

015a wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don’t think they’re trying to save on hardware costs here. This is to prevent any kind of friction and wasted time when switching between branches/environment. If your dev costs you $100/h, you only have to save them +/- 5 hours of faffing around with branches/dependencies every month to make it worth it (assuming a 8 hour workday).

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Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#615

Post by danjac » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 5:25 AM UTC

lucideer wrote: post #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 "T…

Brittle local development in from what I've seen is either due to another symptom of tech debt - an aging monolith with too many different build systems, dependencies and what have you that you end up with way too many Docker containers or the need to have a very long doc for newcomers with "run this script here, then that script there, unless it's a Monday, then run this script over there". Or a team that's gone all-in on a distributed microservices architecture with lambdas all over the place and a dozen or more repos and it's literally impossible (yes there's LocalStack but...) to get a faithful end-to-end local environment up and running.

The nightmarish local development experience of either case are symptoms of deeper issues than local development itself being a problem.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#616

Post by perryizgr8 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 5:27 AM UTC

JoeQuery wrote: post #243

I've developed on a remote server for about 8 years now. It started when I was a contractor and my machine was simply too slow to run the project I was assigned. I did not have the money for a new laptop, but I could afford the ~55/month for a dedicated server with 32GB and 4cores. I have worked that way ever since. I've been fortunate enough to work at companies that run their own VM infrastructure which allow me to…

> remote server for about 8 years now

> I did not have the money for a new laptop

> I could afford the ~55/month for a dedicated server with 32GB and 4cores

Umm... you spent 55128 = ~$5000 over 8 years. You could have bought 3 top-specced laptops. A good $1500 laptop will last at least 2-3 years. You would also get some resale value out of your laptop when you upgrade.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#617

Post by redisman » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 5:27 AM UTC

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!

Mainframe's down again boss!

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#618

Post by p1necone » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 5:35 AM UTC

perryizgr8 wrote: post #616

JoeQuery wrote: post #243

I've developed on a remote server for about 8 years now. It started when I was a contractor and my machine was simply too slow to run the project I was assigned. I did not have the money for a new laptop, but I could afford the ~55/month for a dedicated server with 32GB and 4cores. I have worked that way ever since. I've been fortunate enough to work at companies that run their own VM infrastructure which allow me to…

> remote server for about 8 years now > I did not have the money for a new laptop > I could afford the ~55/month for a dedicated server with 32GB and 4cores Umm... you spent 55 12 8 = ~$5000 over 8 years. You could have bought 3 top-specced laptops. A good $1500 laptop will last at least 2-3 years. You would also get some resale value out of your laptop when you upgrade.

I'm not sure why you're phrasing that math as if it somehow shows it was a bad idea. It is in fact possible to be able to afford a small monthly cost, but not have enough in the bank to immediately drop ~$1500 on a laptop, especially if you're just starting your career.

According to you they paid roughly the same amount as it would have cost to buy laptops and upgrade them relatively frequently, but amortized over much smaller monthly installments.

And their system would have been elastically upgradeable.

On top of that holding on to money and spending it later is generally better than spending it now, because $X is usually worth > X future $ because of inflation/lost ability to invest.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#619

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 5:36 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #284

georgeecollins wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> What is the analogy here? Microsoft wants to embrace and extend... compiling software? and will kill off... existing ways of compiling software? How will this work? Microsoft is embracing free development tools that compete with purchased tools they sold. SourceSafe vs Git, Eclipse vs Visual Studio.. those are terrible examples but you get what I mean. So you make a free tier of VS, you buy git hub etc. Extend.. y…

I understand how EEE is supposed to work. My claim is that it doesn't actually work, at least not for this use case. So for my argument, SourceSafe vs. Git is a great example. :-) You simply can't keep up with a proprietary tool that does its own stuff. You have to use Git. Microsoft tried having a custom version of Git for Windows OS development , and decided that they weren't even able to get themselves to fall for…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#620

Post by JoeQuery » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 5:38 AM UTC

perryizgr8 wrote: post #616

JoeQuery wrote: post #243

I've developed on a remote server for about 8 years now. It started when I was a contractor and my machine was simply too slow to run the project I was assigned. I did not have the money for a new laptop, but I could afford the ~55/month for a dedicated server with 32GB and 4cores. I have worked that way ever since. I've been fortunate enough to work at companies that run their own VM infrastructure which allow me to…

> remote server for about 8 years now > I did not have the money for a new laptop > I could afford the ~55/month for a dedicated server with 32GB and 4cores Umm... you spent 55 12 8 = ~$5000 over 8 years. You could have bought 3 top-specced laptops. A good $1500 laptop will last at least 2-3 years. You would also get some resale value out of your laptop when you upgrade.

It hasn't been the same remote server for 8 years :) I don't pay for a server like that anymore now that I'm employed full time and one is provided for me.

And I was barely coming out of homelessness at the time. 1500 doesn't just pop out of nowhere.

You did just remind me of the time when I was contracting for that company, they flew me out to California but I didn't have enough money on my card to cover the incidentals fee at the hotel they booked for me. Thankfully an employee came through for me. That was pretty embarrassing.