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VS Code. GitHub. NPM. VS Code Online. GitHub CodeSpaces. Integrated Azure. A ten year old today learning programming will be locked in. As will JS yuppies and

VS Code. GitHub. NPM. VS Code Online. GitHub CodeSpaces. Integrated Azure. A ten year old today learning programming will be locked in. As will JS yuppies and the extremely articulate product manager types. I like it. Gives me an opportunity to become a "thought leader" by promoting the UNIX approach to enterprises in 5-10 years.

Doches 6y ago
Jetbrains. Gitlab. Deno. Aws. We're in a world where there's healthy competition in _all_ of these domains, excepting possibly VS online/GH codespaces which both feel like products too young to have yet found a market. In what world is a 10-year-old locked in to the MS ecosystem any more than they were in the days of win32 and IE6? If anything, I'd look askance at Apple for Safari's hiding of `view source` by default...
- pmontra 6y ago
  There is a difference. Amazon doesn't have an OS. Google does but it's not for developers, yet. Apple's is but they care only about their own walled garden, the entrance fee is expensive and they don't have the online ecosystem that Microsoft has built and acquired in the last years. Microsoft is in a good position to control the new developers' experience from the OS to the tools to the deployment cloud (Azure).
  - krzyk 6y ago
    But there is alternative OS - Linux. Lately I know only devs that work either on macos or on Linux. I haven't seen Windows anywhere since few years (except when I do cloud gaming).
    - pmontra 6y ago
      I know. I've been developing on Ubuntu since January 2009. Before that I was using colinux on Windows XP, a Linux kernel in a Windows process, somewhat similar to WSL. http://colinux.org/ http://colinux.org/
Voloskaya 6y ago
When did 'locked in' evolve to mean 'using a product'? None of your examples are remotly akin to lock-in. An example of a lock-in is excel back in the time when the format wasn't public. Wanna use something different? have fun manually re-entering your sheets in your new software. How can GitHub CodeSpaces even cross your mind when thinking about lock-in? This is like saying the textbox on HN is a form of lock-in.
- grishka 6y ago
  > An example of a lock-in is excel back in the time when the format wasn't public. It wasn't public but it was reverse engineered and supported by things like OpenOffice. Anything, especially a file format, that is both proprietary and popular gets reverse engineered at some point.
nojito 6y ago
As opposed to AWS/GCP and others? There is almost no lock in to any product in 2020....people just love the developer ecosystem that MS has built these past 5-8 years or so.
jswny 6y ago
- VSCode is open source, so I'm not sure how that constitutes lock in. Switching text editors is pretty easy. - GitHub has some special things like issues and pull requests but in general you can just switch your origin URL to another Git repository that isn't GitHub and boom you are off GitHub. - NPM you can just point your package.json at any Git repository you want, no need to use the NPM package repo. - VSCode Online: like I said, just use a different online editor. Not too much lock in going on here. Integrations and seamless workflow? Sure. But lock in? No I don't think so.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nindalf 6y ago
  > Switching text editors is pretty easy. Not only is it easy, VS Code made it easier than ever. By creating protocols for language and debugger support, they've liberated future text editor developers from having to support every language under the sun. By adding support for the protocol, the new text editor automatically gains support for all languages.
  - nal10 6y ago
    If you can live with crappy lagging UI. Since the stupid Windows 10 skin VS code is unusable.
    - majewsky 6y ago
      It looks like you replied to the wrong comment.
  - toohotatopic 6y ago
    It's just a funnel. As a strategy, you 'commodify' the resources that you cannot control, especially those that are profitable to your opponents. MS is losing in languages, they don't own the important languages for mobile phones: java, kotlin, swift and objectivec and they have a hard time on the server against go and all the other contenders. With some luck the web remains open and typescript will remain an important language since javascript will keep on being important. The moat for the editor is the plugin shop. We will be able to see how committed they are to being open. At least for now, their Live Share plugin doesn't seem to be available for other editors [1]. It's nice to have easy access to debugging but how do you sell your editor if you don't have all the other productivity features? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23244434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23244434
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tryauuum 6y ago
to think about it... Microsoft also owns Minecraft, so a ten year old redstone scientist is already locked in, even without Git, NPM and all those things
- briantakita 6y ago
  And then there's the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that funds the World Health Organization & invests in Bayer/Monsanto among other medical & food entities. The vendor lock in is Cradle to Grave it seems...
  - briantakita 6y ago
    Oh no! An "inconvenient" & related fact is mentioned. Better downvote the HN way.
- negativegate 6y ago
  Locked in ... to a game?
  - tryauuum 6y ago
    yeah, sounds silly
  - mds 6y ago
    You laugh, but Minecraft Education Edition -- where lots of kids are getting their first exposure to coding -- is locked to Office 365.
wvenable 6y ago
> A ten year old today learning programming will be locked in. If that's what you call "locked in" things are significantly better these days than they were 20-30 years ago!
zamalek 6y ago
> locked in I've been on the Microsoft train since I was 8. I suffered no problems picking up Rust. > "thought leader" by promoting the UNIX approach This is a controversial opinion around here, but the UNIX approach/philosophy isn't particularly good. It is merely beloved. The Microsoft approach isn't much better. A thought leader would actually solve this problem instead of repeating a tired, old and failed non-solution. UNIX sucks. Windows sucks. This circular appeal to nature (UNIX is good because UNIX is good) is getting really old.

Doches 6y ago

Jetbrains. Gitlab. Deno. Aws. We're in a world where there's healthy competition in _all_ of these domains, excepting possibly VS online/GH codespaces which both feel like products too young to have yet found a market. In what world is a 10-year-old locked in to the MS ecosystem any more than they were in the days of win32 and IE6? If anything, I'd look askance at Apple for Safari's hiding of `view source` by default...

pmontra 6y ago
There is a difference. Amazon doesn't have an OS. Google does but it's not for developers, yet. Apple's is but they care only about their own walled garden, the entrance fee is expensive and they don't have the online ecosystem that Microsoft has built and acquired in the last years. Microsoft is in a good position to control the new developers' experience from the OS to the tools to the deployment cloud (Azure).
- krzyk 6y ago
  But there is alternative OS - Linux. Lately I know only devs that work either on macos or on Linux. I haven't seen Windows anywhere since few years (except when I do cloud gaming).
  - pmontra 6y ago
    I know. I've been developing on Ubuntu since January 2009. Before that I was using colinux on Windows XP, a Linux kernel in a Windows process, somewhat similar to WSL. http://colinux.org/ http://colinux.org/

Voloskaya 6y ago

When did 'locked in' evolve to mean 'using a product'? None of your examples are remotly akin to lock-in. An example of a lock-in is excel back in the time when the format wasn't public. Wanna use something different? have fun manually re-entering your sheets in your new software. How can GitHub CodeSpaces even cross your mind when thinking about lock-in? This is like saying the textbox on HN is a form of lock-in.

grishka 6y ago
> An example of a lock-in is excel back in the time when the format wasn't public. It wasn't public but it was reverse engineered and supported by things like OpenOffice. Anything, especially a file format, that is both proprietary and popular gets reverse engineered at some point.

nojito 6y ago

As opposed to AWS/GCP and others? There is almost no lock in to any product in 2020....people just love the developer ecosystem that MS has built these past 5-8 years or so.

jswny 6y ago

- VSCode is open source, so I'm not sure how that constitutes lock in. Switching text editors is pretty easy. - GitHub has some special things like issues and pull requests but in general you can just switch your origin URL to another Git repository that isn't GitHub and boom you are off GitHub. - NPM you can just point your package.json at any Git repository you want, no need to use the NPM package repo. - VSCode Online: like I said, just use a different online editor. Not too much lock in going on here. Integrations and seamless workflow? Sure. But lock in? No I don't think so.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nindalf 6y ago
> Switching text editors is pretty easy. Not only is it easy, VS Code made it easier than ever. By creating protocols for language and debugger support, they've liberated future text editor developers from having to support every language under the sun. By adding support for the protocol, the new text editor automatically gains support for all languages.
- nal10 6y ago
  If you can live with crappy lagging UI. Since the stupid Windows 10 skin VS code is unusable.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    It looks like you replied to the wrong comment.
- toohotatopic 6y ago
  It's just a funnel. As a strategy, you 'commodify' the resources that you cannot control, especially those that are profitable to your opponents. MS is losing in languages, they don't own the important languages for mobile phones: java, kotlin, swift and objectivec and they have a hard time on the server against go and all the other contenders. With some luck the web remains open and typescript will remain an important language since javascript will keep on being important. The moat for the editor is the plugin shop. We will be able to see how committed they are to being open. At least for now, their Live Share plugin doesn't seem to be available for other editors [1]. It's nice to have easy access to debugging but how do you sell your editor if you don't have all the other productivity features? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23244434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23244434

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tryauuum 6y ago

to think about it... Microsoft also owns Minecraft, so a ten year old redstone scientist is already locked in, even without Git, NPM and all those things

briantakita 6y ago
And then there's the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that funds the World Health Organization & invests in Bayer/Monsanto among other medical & food entities. The vendor lock in is Cradle to Grave it seems...
- briantakita 6y ago
  Oh no! An "inconvenient" & related fact is mentioned. Better downvote the HN way.
negativegate 6y ago
Locked in ... to a game?
- tryauuum 6y ago
  yeah, sounds silly
- mds 6y ago
  You laugh, but Minecraft Education Edition -- where lots of kids are getting their first exposure to coding -- is locked to Office 365.

wvenable 6y ago

> A ten year old today learning programming will be locked in. If that's what you call "locked in" things are significantly better these days than they were 20-30 years ago!

zamalek 6y ago

> locked in I've been on the Microsoft train since I was 8. I suffered no problems picking up Rust. > "thought leader" by promoting the UNIX approach This is a controversial opinion around here, but the UNIX approach/philosophy isn't particularly good. It is merely beloved. The Microsoft approach isn't much better. A thought leader would actually solve this problem instead of repeating a tired, old and failed non-solution. UNIX sucks. Windows sucks. This circular appeal to nature (UNIX is good because UNIX is good) is getting really old.