I'm just starting to notice the oh-no-so-that's-how-getting-old-works fumes myself (31, and not quite on track yet either yay lol). I empathize.
Way I see it, there are at least two ways to use this sort of thing:
- Connecting to corporate dev servers (most likely in EC2, maybe on-prem), maybe even using a tablet or Chromebook
- Doing editing on personal boxen from either across the room, or across town, using an integrated experience that smoothly achieves what the editor+SSH/(S)FTP thing handled reasonably well but not this well
So it's kind of like just moving the server around. Sure it enables the sort of mass anonymity you're describing, but doesn't enforce or especially empower that type of scenario to happen any sooner.
Also just FWIW, VSCode is local-first; it was built for Electron, then monkey-patched (unreasonably easily for obvious reasons) to save and load data using HTTPS APIs... but even though this does now require an online internet connection this particular contraption is built on top of GitLab, and presumably all this will find its way into GitLab CE, so you still retain the ability to own the whole process.
This sort of thing also has a stealth killer app in responding incredibly effectively to the "oh great production broke" type of situation - you can now very literally borrow the first machine in sight, since you only need to open a single incognito tab to do your work. You could even fullscreen the tab to hide whatever else might be on the screen (and you might even prefer to to gain screen real estate).