4 ms·

I think people are missing the point that these cloud IDEs mean you don't need to be nearby or carry around a powerful + expensive laptop to work. You could tr

I think people are missing the point that these cloud IDEs mean you don't need to be nearby or carry around a powerful + expensive laptop to work. You could travel with a cheap throwaway Chromebook and know you can still get work done. If it gets stolen or lost, you can get a replacement the same day and get back to work. I've been in situations where I've travelled to some place where I don't want to bring my expensive work laptop (e.g. want to travel light, the weather is awful, it's a sketchy area), and had my work laptop break randomly a couple of days before a big deadline where I couldn't wait for it to get repaired.

signal11 7y ago
Great point about powerful/expensive laptops. A problem I've run across is that machines with small SSDs are often not suitable for Visual Studio (the 'real' VS, not VS Code) if you want to do certain kinds of native development. Installing some combinations of dev tools eats significant chunks of hard drive space, and worse, a lot of that space seems to be on C:, which often is a small SSD. You can ask for Visual Studio to install on other drives, but it will still eat a chunk of space on C:. The installer actually shows how much space will be used up on the system drive. Also VS is very slow if SSDs aren't available -- the VS docs recommend an SSD, in fact. None of this matters to professional Windows (C++/C#) developers with 512GB-1TB SSDs or more, but remember than you can get started with Node, or Java, or Python, on much more lower-end machines. It's also much quicker to install and get started with these platforms. So yes, anything that reduces developer friction and gets them to consider building rich Windows apps is a good thing for Microsoft -- it's almost too late already, but making it brain-dead easy to develop rich, native Windows apps would be a great start. They could and should offer free/low-cost online environments for hobbyists and students, for instance.
sorenjan 7y ago
It's probably great for border crossings into countries that demands to look through your private data, like the US and Canada.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
> I think people are missing the point that these cloud IDEs mean you don't need to be nearby or carry around a powerful + expensive laptop to work. You already don't need to do this! Just RDP into your workstation. Christ, we've been doing it since the 90s people!
- jkaptur 7y ago
  At least in the late 2000's, input latency made this incredibly painful for me over all but the very best connections. I haven't tried it since then, but maybe some of the Stadia tech can improve things.
- jakear 7y ago
  RDP will require much higher bandwidth and come with much greater latency as compared to VSO.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    My company has people doing work through web apps that they access using RDP to a VM here at corporate because there internet is bad and it is faster and more responsive that way.
    - jakear 7y ago
      I’ve used both VSCode over RDP and VSO and in my experience VSO is smoother.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
  RDP is not the same thing and performance is often less than desirable. Close though.
hiram112 7y ago
> You could travel with a cheap throwaway Chromebook and know you can still get work done. If it gets stolen or lost, you can get a replacement the same day and get back to work. If I'm traveling light, a 1.5KG Macbook Pro or X1 Carbon Thinkpad is not going to cause me problems, and I'd much rather go without extra t-shirts or sandals (which I can buy and toss) than my laptop. OTOH, one of my biggest issues with traveling, especially to foreign countries outside the West, is lack of decent internet. Numerous times I basically just had to work offline the best I could using my real IDE and local git repos, and then sync up at an expensive hotel or restaurant with decent wifi, in which I wasn't staying or eating (i.e. use it quickly to sync, not sit there all day).
diffeomorphism 7y ago
Thin clients are not exactly a new thing and mean that you are completely out of luck if you have a bad/no internet connection. Also, you probably still want a decent screen and keyboard and need to pay for the remote machine as well, at which point it becomes not really cheaper. Example from 2012: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/swap-your-laptop-ipad-linode https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/swap-your-laptop-ipad-l...
2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
That was my takeaway.

signal11 7y ago

Great point about powerful/expensive laptops. A problem I've run across is that machines with small SSDs are often not suitable for Visual Studio (the 'real' VS, not VS Code) if you want to do certain kinds of native development. Installing some combinations of dev tools eats significant chunks of hard drive space, and worse, a lot of that space seems to be on C:, which often is a small SSD. You can ask for Visual Studio to install on other drives, but it will still eat a chunk of space on C:. The installer actually shows how much space will be used up on the system drive. Also VS is very slow if SSDs aren't available -- the VS docs recommend an SSD, in fact. None of this matters to professional Windows (C++/C#) developers with 512GB-1TB SSDs or more, but remember than you can get started with Node, or Java, or Python, on much more lower-end machines. It's also much quicker to install and get started with these platforms. So yes, anything that reduces developer friction and gets them to consider building rich Windows apps is a good thing for Microsoft -- it's almost too late already, but making it brain-dead easy to develop rich, native Windows apps would be a great start. They could and should offer free/low-cost online environments for hobbyists and students, for instance.

sorenjan 7y ago

It's probably great for border crossings into countries that demands to look through your private data, like the US and Canada.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

> I think people are missing the point that these cloud IDEs mean you don't need to be nearby or carry around a powerful + expensive laptop to work. You already don't need to do this! Just RDP into your workstation. Christ, we've been doing it since the 90s people!

jkaptur 7y ago
At least in the late 2000's, input latency made this incredibly painful for me over all but the very best connections. I haven't tried it since then, but maybe some of the Stadia tech can improve things.
jakear 7y ago
RDP will require much higher bandwidth and come with much greater latency as compared to VSO.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  My company has people doing work through web apps that they access using RDP to a VM here at corporate because there internet is bad and it is faster and more responsive that way.
  - jakear 7y ago
    I’ve used both VSCode over RDP and VSO and in my experience VSO is smoother.
2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
RDP is not the same thing and performance is often less than desirable. Close though.

hiram112 7y ago

> You could travel with a cheap throwaway Chromebook and know you can still get work done. If it gets stolen or lost, you can get a replacement the same day and get back to work. If I'm traveling light, a 1.5KG Macbook Pro or X1 Carbon Thinkpad is not going to cause me problems, and I'd much rather go without extra t-shirts or sandals (which I can buy and toss) than my laptop. OTOH, one of my biggest issues with traveling, especially to foreign countries outside the West, is lack of decent internet. Numerous times I basically just had to work offline the best I could using my real IDE and local git repos, and then sync up at an expensive hotel or restaurant with decent wifi, in which I wasn't staying or eating (i.e. use it quickly to sync, not sit there all day).

diffeomorphism 7y ago

Thin clients are not exactly a new thing and mean that you are completely out of luck if you have a bad/no internet connection. Also, you probably still want a decent screen and keyboard and need to pay for the remote machine as well, at which point it becomes not really cheaper. Example from 2012: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/swap-your-laptop-ipad-linode https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/swap-your-laptop-ipad-l...

2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago

That was my takeaway.