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Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

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Re: Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

#101

Post by mesaframe »

mbar84 wrote: post #94
songzme wrote: post #80

I teach underprivileged adults how to code. Most of them use old computers so I had them ssh into my server when they code so they don't have to install anything. When they learn about web development, whatever they built would be immediately available online under their subdomains that they could show off immediately to their friends and try on their phones. The only drawback is that they had to learn and use vim to…

Perhaps you can let them edit their files locally and instead of vim, teach them how to scp/rsync the files onto your server. Hopefully their computers are at least fast enough to run VS-Code.

My mid end computer isn't fast enough to run VS code.

Re: Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

#102

Post by pmontra »

8ytecoder wrote: post #61
shaklee3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of web development, sometimes you need special hardware or workspaces configured to do development. Usually this can be done in a container, but that comes with its own annoyances. Having a central development server for large compiled code bases is really useful.

Not true. Worked on a real distributed payment system. Every service came with a mock clone or a single server mode to standup all services in the same box. Every developer had a powerful personal desktop (or two). I loved it. Everyone I knew there loved it.

This is an ideal case and I wish it's like this for everybody. At least one of the payment providers I'm working with in a customer's project doesn't even have a sandbox. We must test with real money. Obviously we mock everything in unit and integration tests, but to know that it really works the customer must put money on the manual testing account.

Re: Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

#103

Post by dan-robertson »

Scarbutt wrote: post #40
dan-robertson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing about tramp is that it requires code to be written agains it. When it was added to emacs, developers had not previously had to think that some buffers might be on remote machines and so their code would not magically work agains it. New code ought to be written with tramp in mind using functions that work remotely but this isn’t always done. With a complex development environment (say compiler, separate…

Emacs works great in a terminal, all the issues you mentioned disappear ;) (you didn't mention why you really need GUI Emacs) - I use emacs 95% of the time inside remote tmux sessions, you also have true color support is that your thing, what issues do you have? Also, ITerm lets you open http links.

Emacs in a terminal misses out on various text properties, on things like client frames (or just multiple frames in general), on images, and on font/size variety. I suppose you may feel like you don’t want to ever touch the mouse for some reason but I think it’s often useful for scrolling, selecting, copying, and pasting. There are also a bunch of keys which can’t be differentiated by a terminal. Finally the gui wastes less space on buffer dividers and the fringe

Re: Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

#104

Post by rpastuszak »

songzme wrote: post #80

I teach underprivileged adults how to code. Most of them use old computers so I had them ssh into my server when they code so they don't have to install anything. When they learn about web development, whatever they built would be immediately available online under their subdomains that they could show off immediately to their friends and try on their phones. The only drawback is that they had to learn and use vim to…

Are their machines able to run VSCode?

I've had a really good experience with VSCode remote development tools (https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/remote-overview). Both filesystem access and sharing local web servers works out of the box.

Happy to chat and see if we can figure sth out.

Re: Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

#105

Post by m0zg »

p1esk wrote: post #99
m0zg wrote: post #71

BTW folks who haven't tried VS Code SSH remote yet, it's _very_ impressive. For all intents and purposes you get "local" dev experience on a remote box, connected over SSH. Python code complete and cross-referencing is much smarter than what you'd usually get in Vim, and if you want Vim keybindings, you can have that too. I still use Vim for a lot of things, but when I need to work on a large codebase and need better…

What are the benefits of having local dev experience on a remote box vs coding locally and sending the code to the remote machine to run it there (e.g. Pycharm remote deployment)?

Some companies, like e.g. Google or Facebook do not allow company code to be stored on a laptop, even if it's company laptop. And even if they did have code there it would not be practical, because everything above the kernel is compiled from source and it would take forever without build artifact cache. That, BTW, affects you even if you work with Python, because Python has to pull in a bunch of custom C++ libs to call the various services, and guess what, those are also built from source. Add to that the fact that your laptop is usually a Mac, and you're developing for Linux, and not just any Linux, but a Google/FB flavor thereof, with custom hacks, custom toolchains, etc. The code you work with is mapped to your workstation using a custom filesystem, so you don't store it there either. It's all transparent to you, of course.

So it's not really practical to do "local" development even if that were allowed.

But even if you aren't at a FANG, your company workstation often has the "right" set up and it's much more powerful than a laptop, so if you're dealing with compiled languages it might just be easier to deal with it remotely, as long as the experience is seamless.

Re: Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

#106

Post by p1esk »

m0zg wrote: post #105
p1esk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the benefits of having local dev experience on a remote box vs coding locally and sending the code to the remote machine to run it there (e.g. Pycharm remote deployment)?

Some companies, like e.g. Google or Facebook do not allow company code to be stored on a laptop, even if it's company laptop. And even if they did have code there it would not be practical, because everything above the kernel is compiled from source and it would take forever without build artifact cache. That, BTW, affects you even if you work with Python, because Python has to pull in a bunch of custom C++ libs to c…

Ok, but what if you want to run the same code on multiple remote machines (e.g. launch several deep learning simulations)?

Re: Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

#107

Post by fock »

mesaframe wrote: post #101
mbar84 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you can let them edit their files locally and instead of vim, teach them how to scp/rsync the files onto your server. Hopefully their computers are at least fast enough to run VS-Code.

My mid end computer isn't fast enough to run VS code.

mid end by which standards. my notebook is getting pretty low-end by today (i5-4200U) and it just runs fine...

Re: Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

#108

Post by rgoulter »

madhadron wrote: post #84
lightgreen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe people who can’t learn vim can actually code something meaningful, but why not use any other editor like nano?

Do you think that figuring out vim is a good use for people who are probably time limited anyway and are trying to build useful skills? Using a vi clone is a lifestyle choice, not an employable skill. Frankly, so is nano or anything else that asks them to abandon the skills they may have developed for navigating their computing environment.

Computers are hard. Websites are complicated.

Learning vim is more of an obstacle than using Notepad++ and FileZilla would be.

As a beginner, you know only enough to pass by. You can do a lot with just passing by, so long as you don't bump into places you can't get yourself out of. "Just enough command line and vi to edit a file" is a bit magic, but plenty of the other stuff involved is going to be as opaque.

I think the skillset of "learn how to write websites in a short time" is going to involve some level of "here's this stuff I have to do in just the right way" anyway.

Re: Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

#109

Post by sbmthakur »

rgoulter wrote: post #108
madhadron wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that figuring out vim is a good use for people who are probably time limited anyway and are trying to build useful skills? Using a vi clone is a lifestyle choice, not an employable skill. Frankly, so is nano or anything else that asks them to abandon the skills they may have developed for navigating their computing environment.

Computers are hard. Websites are complicated. Learning vim is more of an obstacle than using Notepad++ and FileZilla would be. As a beginner, you know only enough to pass by. You can do a lot with just passing by, so long as you don't bump into places you can't get yourself out of. "Just enough command line and vi to edit a file" is a bit magic, but plenty of the other stuff involved is going to be as opaque. I think…

I think it depends on the situation. In my case, learning Vim was quite beneficial as I had to maintain servers along with backend development. For any frontend development, starting with a modern IDE will be any day faster than Vim.

Re: Facebook and Microsoft Partner on Remote Development

#110

Post by kolla »

mesaframe wrote: post #101
mbar84 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you can let them edit their files locally and instead of vim, teach them how to scp/rsync the files onto your server. Hopefully their computers are at least fast enough to run VS-Code.

My mid end computer isn't fast enough to run VS code.

A raspberry pi can run VS Code so I'm a bit curious what you call a mid end computer.
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