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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

#621

Post by baby »

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…

Top comments always have to be so negative every time there’s something cool on the front page…

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#622

Post by kart23 »

reggieband wrote: post #334

I've had this vision for over a decade and it is awesome to see we are finally making measurable progress towards it. What I'd really like to see is a WebRTC type interface that overlays this to provide some kind of collaborative environment on top of it. I'm thinking of a built in voice chat as well as multi-author editing within the same codespace. Imagine it like pair programming. I'm in FileA.ts and I can see a l…

Isn't that what repl.it is? (I've never actually used it, so forgive me if I got it wrong)

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#624

Post by puchatek »

jorams wrote: post #561
Barrin92 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this not another example of the 'HN echo chamber'? Is Windows market share budging? Windows currently is by far not the worst iteration of the OS and nobody gives a crap about anti-user features which everyone has had to deal with for literally decades

> nobody gives a crap about anti-user features which everyone has had to deal with for literally decades The one thing that used to set Microsoft apart from the likes of Google and Facebook was that their main product, Windows, was not anti-user. No matter what you thought about the OS or Microsoft's business practices, it was a paid piece of software that worked for the user. Windows now is filled with user-hostile…

If i sum all the instances of Ubuntu but doing what i wanted it to do and compare that to the dystopia that windows theoretically exposes me to I'm not sure what's better tbh. But if you want to play modern games on your PC then the choice of OS has been made for you.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#625

Post by thayne »

slownews45 wrote: post #411
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 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…

> but are YOU paying for it. If not - someone else is the revenue source

even if you are paying for it, it's quite possible that they also have other revenue sources that conflict with your interests.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#626

Post by thayne »

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…

> It's like if Facebook released their own web browser and "promised" to respect your privacy; you'd be an idiot to believe them.

Replace Facebook with another major ad company, and you are basically describing the most popular browser right now.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#627

Post by sammorrowdrums »

wnevets wrote: post #605
sammorrowdrums wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve very recently become a GitHub engineer, and I got pre-access to the beta too and I must say - my absolute favourite thing about CoseSpaces is being able to dev on a repo you don’t work on regularly and probably wouldn’t contribute if it meant having to set up environment etc. It’s really nice to just dip into a project with a working environment in seconds, make your PR and then move on.

> . It’s really nice to just dip into a project with a working environment in seconds, make your PR and then move on. That sounds incredibly useful actually. Is that the main sales pitch for codespaces?

Well I use them for regular dev in work too on especially larger repos with heavier toolchains, and both are big plusses for me personally!

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#628

Post by thayne »

oldsecondhand wrote: post #591
pdpi wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FWIW, Gitlab calls them merge requests instead of pull requests, which IMO is a more descriptive name.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#629

Post by sammorrowdrums »

imron wrote: post #528
lilyball wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem that can be solved without Codespaces too. For example, if GitHub were to embrace Nix, every project could have a shell.nix file for all of their dependencies, and the new engineer bootstrap script that installs Nix could then just add an internal Nix binary cache (or use Cachix). Any time the shell.nix changes a GitHub Action could push the closure to the binary cache. With this setup, you can use…

Does it take 10 seconds to spin a new one up? If not, then it misses the main benefit outlined in the article.

Yeah, it’s really fast. In fact before I joined, I also set up a default CodeSpaces environment for my own repo and then I was up and running in only a few minutes, and that was the first time so I was learning and reading the docs. I could then set up all subsequent new CodeSpaces to start in seconds.

But yes, once a project commits to using CodeSpaces dev environment (even and especially ones with large code / heavyweight environments) there is a lot that can be done to optimise the spawn up time, that cannot be done as easily for local dev.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#630

Post by wuschel »

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-...

I am not sure what is possible in other jurisdictions such as the EU, but I have not seen something like this so far.
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