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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

#381

Post by twobitshifter »

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…

See Englebart’s mother of all demos.

I think he had everything in your first couple paragraphs working in 1968!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6rKUf9DWRI

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#382

Post by reggieband »

dynamicwebpaige wrote: post #356
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…

> _I'm thinking of a built in voice chat as well as multi-author editing within the same Codespace._ You should try Live Share! VS Code Live Share enables you to collaboratively edit and debug with others in real time, regardless what programming languages you're using or app types you're building. It also supports voice chat: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MS-vsliv...

This isn't exactly what I'm proposing since it seems to be based around sharing my code. I may be misunderstanding the documentation and examples however. Live Share appears to be me inviting people to connect to my personal session.

I see a codespace as a shared destination. It lives independently of any individual. I can hop in and out whenever I want and it continues to live.

To expand on this, it reminds me of how way back in the day we used to use MSN Messenger (and then Skype) to facilitate work chat. The model there was a contact list, a list of individuals I could reach out to and connect. There were group chats as well, but the primary mental model was closer to a phone call. Then Slack came and changed the model so that channels were the default, shared spaces were preferred over personal chats or ad-hoc groups. I don't want the default to be "I have my session and may invite others to join". I want the default to be "there is a shared workspace I connect to that others might be currently active in".

You might even imagine an interface similar to Slack channels (or Teams if that is your world). I could have multiple codespaces as channels that I can switch between. Within each codespace there may be active several devs. I can jump in and out. You could even setup permissions like "read only" spaces or whatever.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#383

Post by anthony_r »

yellowbanana wrote: post #373
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…

The fact that they will be able to do it, is problem, we should not put ourselves in position to rely on their future morality. Github at this point needs to be open source, atleast then they would be an easier way out.

Lol, like Microsoft paid the billions to give it out now for free. Besides, do you want your index funds to do well? Because that's exactly where the proceeds go to.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#384

Post by bee_rider »

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…

> Also slightly hilarious that "This is the way" is a Star Wars callback referring to a character blindly following dogma before eventually realising the error of their ways...

My friends, I’m here to tell you I was a Codespaces skeptic before order 66 and now I am not. Good engineers follow orders.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#385

Post by kjksf »

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 they do, the competition is just a click away: https://www.gitpod.io/

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#386

Post by throwaway_fjmr »

Bit of a tangent; I used to work for a fintech company that had a good few ex-Googlers. Their setup was similar to using Codespaces: cheap, locked-down Chromebooks for devs to type on, remotely accessible machines or cloud VMs in a well-separated network to host the monorepo, run builds etc.

It was an extremely miserable experience.

While I love the marketing materials of Codespaces and I want to believe in the superiority of remote development, I'm not yet convinced.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#387

Post by zamalek »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #331
zamalek wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been playing around with a homegrown version of this. It's really not that hard: just set up a docker context to your home lab server and use VSCode remote containers. I've been able to remove WSL from my PC: Docker desktop was gouging itself on resources. I can now also shut down my desktop and continue exactly where I was on my laptop, and visa-versa. I don't have to pull WIP commits back and forth between the…

I've never used Docker. Is this sort of like using tmux/vim on a cloud server?

I'm guessing that VSCode has a distinct back-end and front-end. It's able to run the back-end server on the remote machine/container/whatever over a bog-standard SSH tunnel. Any autocomplete functionality, debugging, etc. will use the resources on the remote machine. It also does port forwarding for you. The front-end (GUI) runs on your local machine.

A closer analogy would be using Plan9, and mounting most of your cloud machine locally. Vim would then just be your local front-end into those mount points.

Containers/docker add the ability to share your exact machine configuration with someone else, and have them create their own copy of it with a single command. It would be almost like sharing a VM image with your team. There's been a lot written about the pros/cons of containers, but they achieve similar goals to VMs, and so-happen to bring a lot to the table in this scenario.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#388

Post by greyhair »

anthony_r wrote: post #383
yellowbanana wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they will be able to do it, is problem, we should not put ourselves in position to rely on their future morality. Github at this point needs to be open source, atleast then they would be an easier way out.

Lol, like Microsoft paid the billions to give it out now for free. Besides, do you want your index funds to do well? Because that's exactly where the proceeds go to.

More than that, github was floundering economically, and Microsoft bought them to ensure continuity, because Microsoft was the single largest user.

Don't want to rely on Microsoft for GitHub? The underlying 'git' is open source. Just deal with your git repos raw.

No one is forcing you to use github.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#389

Post by SamuelAdams »

bratbag wrote: post #372
wolverine876 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are different risks, but there is not necessarily more risk. Does Codespaces have lower or higher than the availability risks of your current environment?

My current environment is my laptop, which I would also need to access codespaces. So by extension, codespaces is more risky than my current environment.

I’ve had corporate laptops get BSOD’d because a sysadmin pushed a bad GPO rule that worked fine on 99% of their clients but butchered the developer laptops.

Another fun one was when an org was rolling out CarbonBlack on all endpoints and decided to block all Java. Because apparently Java in the web browser is a security threat. They blocked 30 devs Java runtimes as a result. So there was an entire afternoon wasted for those guys.

To a corporation the risks of GitHub being down might be ok. Plus this will drastically increase on boarding devs to an existing project.

Re: GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces

#390

Post by donny2018 »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #378
donny2018 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if this is a good indicator or not, but Codespaces costs money. So there is a non-zero probability that you are not the product.

Businesses can both charge money for a service and sell / analyze user data. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

I agree. But as a rule of thumb, if someone gives you the service for free, they have no choice but to collect value from you by other means. Whereas when you pay money for the service, the business does have a choice not to sell your data. Either way, I guess we need to read the terms to be sure.
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