Show HN: Devbox – Easy, predictable shells and containers

What you describe is also a sensible use of CUE. I suppose if one of your goals is 'avoid asking users to use a language they don't already know', it might be for the best. :)

But personally I wouldn't mind seeing a bit of CUE usage to work with devboxes, hehe.

For continuity, here is my aside on CUE from that comment, apropos of nothing but my lack of reading comprehension :D

----

CUE is, like Nix, a simple, configuration-oriented DSL. But unlike Nix, it's really just extended JSON (a JSON file can be thought of as a CUE file where all of the values are concrete), it has a different kind of type system where values are types, and the language is decidedly not Turing complete. The type system is pretty neat, and the basic idea is that you can put constraints in the place of values, and write data structures that contain mixes of each. Then latter you can apply those constraints to a configuration/specification and CUE will tell you whether they're compatible. It's cool because you can write your specification and your data in the same format.

While CUE is not a full programming language, it does have a small stdlib and basic 'comprehensions' (like list comprehensions in Python) for generating data structures from other data structures. This gives at least a little flexibility and some hope of concision, defining repetitive data structures.

Having used Nix a lot and CUE a little, I'm not sure which set of tradeoffs in terms of power and simplicity is it right one, but I do think that CUE's choices are interesting and reasonable, and its type system is clever and easy to work with.

I know what you're gonna say. You'll say, "It's 2022. We developers don't have internet connections; even when we do, our internet is off most of the time, and we can barely transfer 1.25 megabytes per second. How could we possibly use an IDE and filesystem monitor to copy a 10kB source file when we write to it, to a remote container + open shell with our app running? The technology is simply too complicated for us. We will never see such wonders in our lifetime."

And I would say to you: take courage. If you believe in yourself, and maybe with some luck, it might be possible for you to do development remotely, like every server admin has been doing over telnet and ssh for over 30 years.

Maybe in another 30 years, we will have gained the technological insight to be able to figure out how to have a team full of people to work on a single server at the same time, all connected to a network over an internet connection, with some crazy interface that keeps their shell session alive even if their internet disconnects. A man can dream...