11 ms·

Gitpod shipped GitHub a launch cake for Codespaces

237 points by ghuntley 5y ago

reilly3000 5y ago
That’s quite a cake, and a cheeky way to put themselves into the conversation. GitPod was and is a great service and I hope they find a sustainable path forward. Of course they can support other repo hosting services, but codespaces must have been a devastating blow. Best to them.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Geoff here from Gitpod. Codespaces launching is _awesome_ and we have been waiting for this moment for so long (over 2 years!) - now everyone is talking about improving developer experience. ps. If you run technical workshops I would <3 to speak with you https://www.gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code https://www.gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code
  - universa1 5y ago
    very nice gesture :-) greetings from kiel <3
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    Is it though? This totally sounds like "yeay... we love that you've ruined our business model, it's greeaaat!" Though I get that you can't really say that you're gutted. And at least they aren't giving Codespaces away for free, so you can at least compete. And I guess companies like Shazam and TomTom still exist, despite Google making way better free versions of their products.
    - cube2222 5y ago
      Not affiliated with anything of this at all, but this can totally be a good thing for them. GitHub entering this space gives them additional validation of the existence of a market for this kind of product and gives a lot of additional exposure to the product idea as a whole. Even if they will now get a smaller percentage of developers using this kind of tool, the rise in the total number of developers using such tools will most probably make up for it.
  - gbraad 5y ago
    GitPod so far has been a better experience, unless you get access to the actually 'paid' codespaces. Dealing with branches is a pain and a fork is impossible with the GitHub web editor. GitPod has a better real desktop experience in the browser. So I can see how this can help verify the experience they are after and confirms people want. Personally been using GitPod a lot for mentoring and small workshops. (but also coder).
  - thrownaway810 5y ago
    Gitpod looks awesome! I hope a CodeCommit integration is coming so I can use this in my environment. Also great work leading the charge on the COVIDSafe app last year - I knew I knew your name from somewhere!
  - krrrh 5y ago
    I’ll add an anecdote here that I’ve been really looking forward to playing with codespaces, and after seeing this post earlier today I spent a bit of time playing with gitpod, and reading up on comparisons. The clear pricing, prebuilds, and simple configuration has me leaning towards trialing gitpod for our team, I doubt I would have even been aware of it without the hype around codespaces.
- epolanski 5y ago
  The fact that free git platforms exists all around doesn't kill dozens of profitable alternatives. The same could be said about codespaces. In fact, more people getting into codespaces is great for platforms like gitpod that can fight and offer solid alternative experiences. The issue I believe for platforms like gitpod is to shift the mindset of many devs and companies that developing in a browser isn't merely a possibility but sometimes preferable.
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    > preferable Pull up a chair for a moment and consider that in this moment of time you are an open-source maintainer or a team-lead who has to review the pull-requests in the video below. Each browser tab is a brand new development environment, the git branch is automatically cloned, all dependencies are restored and your software has already been compiled. Good? Now you understand what Gitpod is all about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7BINiu_Rbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7BINiu_Rbo
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - gbraad 5y ago
      Pretty much the same here. It provides an easy view on the PR and for basic smoke tests. Have been using c9 before this, but GitPod changed a lot for the better.
  - cxr 5y ago
    Many of these platforms aren't really interested in shifting the _full_ development to the browser (although they could), since that would destroy the business position they're trying to establish for themselves. JS was created to be able to run in the browser, and yet most JS developers insist on still writing or relying on metatooling that can't actually run in the browser, even if that tooling is already written in JS! It requires downloading and installing an SDK/runtime† like NodeJS, or relying on a service provider like GitPod to provide the analog (read: run the same tools, but on machines that they own and that you can communicate with via the browser viewport). If folks were really committed to improving the developer experience, then instead of what we do now and instead of what services like GitPod and Codespaces propose that we do, development would work like this: 1. Download the project source tree 2. Open README.html 3. Drag and drop the project source _onto_ README.html, which doesn't contain half explanations about setting up the appropriate development environment, so much as it contains an exact description (i.e. in executable code) of the build process—for the benefit of the machine that will perform it (along with these three steps—for the benefit of the human/prospective contributor) † See <https://www.colbyrussell.com/2019/03/06/how-to-displace-javascript.html https://www.colbyrussell.com/2019/03/06/how-to-displace-java...>
- manigandham 5y ago
  On the contrary, the software engineering industry is massive and market validation with more competitors is a good thing. You can build a great business just dealing with companies that don't use Github.
- cknoxrun 5y ago
  Personally, this post made me aware there are existing alternatives to Codespaces. Codespaces is very cool, but it also adds to an ever-growing single point of failure, which is dependence on Github for almost all of our tools and tooling. Using robust alternatives can help to spread that risk around.
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Gitpod is open-source, accepts pull-requests and can be self hosted on your own infrastructure btw.
ozzydave 5y ago
Pretty curious why Facebook is listed as a customer - they built this internally ~5 years ago and wouldn’t buy it in afaik.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  In a large organization, it's quite common that some division buys a tool on their own, without the other divisions knowing about it. Especially in a company as large as Facebook. So realistically this means someone from Facebook gave them money at least once, not that all of FB is a customer.
enlightens 5y ago
> thus a lot of our employees are German. After an unfair vote, German Chocolate was declared the winner, but it wasn’t without some office debate as to what German Chocolate tastes like It's not from Germany, it's named after a guy named Samuel German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_chocolate_cake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_chocolate_cake ... just like a French drain is named after Henry Flagg French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_drain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_drain
- belval 5y ago
  Fun fact after that last one, while France will call a French drain a drain, Quebec (the French-speaking part of Canada) actually calls it a "drain Français" due to the influence of English neighbours. We translated the guy's name.
  - mrosett 5y ago
    Off topic, but I got a good laugh when I learned that the French call French toast "Pain perdu Americain"
    - espadrine 5y ago
      We only call it that when we visit the US though.
    - Kydlaw 5y ago
      I'm sorry to announce you that somebody fooled you. Source: I'm french, lived in many different regions and everybody called it simply "pain perdu". Moreover, french people usually do not add the origin of a recipe like american do on a regular basis.
      - glandium 5y ago
        Also, pain perdu and French toast are different things. You don't use fresh bread for pain perdu, that would be a waste (pun intended).
up6w6 5y ago
What are the key differences between Gitpod's vscode and Coder's code-server[1] ? It seems that competition would be a lot easier if Microsoft just adds codespace's features directly to vscode. [1] https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bsksi 5y ago
The post renders completely and correctly and is promptly replaced by a 500 error that is probably fake. Modern web development is hilarious.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Our fault, fix deployed. Thanks for letting me know.
  - y4mi 5y ago
    I'm still encountering the same issue though :)
    - mikenikles 5y ago
      That's on me, although I haven't quite figured out what causes it :). It's all static pages. I'm going to completely remove all Javascript on pages that don't need it, which is most of them. Investigation continues...
wg0 5y ago
GitPod is awesome and of course ahead of time. I for one, however find it heartwarming - groups of humans competing against each other and cheering for each other with sweets and cakes. We, probably at the same time can be the worst and the best creature on this planet.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ignoramous 5y ago
Ah, reminds me of the good ol' browser wars: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358300 (From Redmond with Love - IE team sends cake for FF4, 2011)
- glandium 5y ago
  That tradition hasn't been lost. Cakes are still regularly sent. I think the last ones were https://mobile.twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1220135193991962625 https://mobile.twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1220135193991962...
doctorhandshake 5y ago
My favorite part of this marketing stunt is how classy the author was about giving maximum shine to the baker. It is indeed an excellent-looking cake and she deserves it.
- tyingq 5y ago
  That was nice. You can still see, though, the initial hesitancy to let the baker run with the idea. We're pretty funny as a group where we push back hard on our customers that want to peer into details. But we tend to not return the favor to other fields of expertise when we need their help. I've noticed physicians and pilots are often the same way.
  - gffrd 5y ago
    A lawyer friend used to say his worst customers were engineers and doctors, who would want to understand the entire legal system before being being comfortable with a legal position.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      At the risk of showing how much I live in a bubble: Yes? How else would you do it? Not understanding seems like a great way to at best get caught flat footed and and worst unintentionally do something illegal.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- lostintangent 5y ago
  Agreed! Unfortunately, most of the Codespaces team aren't even in the SF area, in order to actually receive this cake (like most modern teams, we're heavily distributed). But I love that this gave awareness for Camisha, and her unbelievable cakes.
jdorfman 5y ago
Brilliant work Geoffrey.
bla3 5y ago
That's a good-looking cake!
hbn 5y ago
Do people really type like that normally? With emojis interspersed in the middle of sentences?
- moritonal 5y ago
  Given the user ghuntley is claiming to be the author, and types with "<3" in their messages, it seems so? I feel like emoji's in conversation are a good middle ground for the lack of body-language?
  - hbn 5y ago
    I'm not knocking emojis across the board, I use them plenty in text conversations. But with something like, > I’ve been scrolling through your facebook page and would love to work with you. HN doesn't show emojis but in his email he puts a heart after the word "love." Which seems redundant and breaks up the sentence awkwardly
    - Smaug123 5y ago
      I dunno - I'm definitely a language purist, and even so, I will admit that the emoji is not redundant. It causes the emphasis of the sentence to fall on the word "love", rather than "work". It has a similar effect to "I would *love* to work with you", but without the awkward plain-text formatting.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Sigh, newspeak (yeah I'm abusing the term)... You even have uptalk in text with 2 sentences ending in "?". People are going to downvote this because I'm going to sound (and be) patronising, but drop it, uptalk makes you sound not confident. Some guy whose girlfriend I follow on Facebook posts updates with emojis next to words, something like "We went up [Mountain emoji] Mount Cook today", etc. It's excruciating, the last time I saw something like this was when I was doing fill-in-the-blanks in kindergarten, where we had to add the words next to the picture hints, so when people write like that, yeah I think they're kindergartners.
raybb 5y ago
I personally love using gitpod for open source work. I got it setup and working for open library (https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary) and I think some people have been quite happy to not have to download them many GB of docker images to their machine to be able to do small tweaks.
illnewsthat 5y ago
The page title says "Page Not Found" which would make you think it's a 404, the page body says "500 Oh, no! Something went wrong on our side." But the actual HTTP response is 200 OK. The entire /blog section has a flash of content and then is replaced with the error message. If you view the source, you can still find the content. Oh, but if I turn off uBlock Origin and the analytics.js and newsletter-signup.js/css are allowed to load then the page loads fine. Interesting!
- mikenikles 5y ago
  Thanks for the many details! We continue to investigate that... I noticed the same with the Brave browser a few months ago, but when we dropped Google Analytics it worked with Brave. Diving deeper into what uBlock Origin does... Thanks!
sida 5y ago
I recently started using hosted codespaces (because I bought a apple M1 and ran into a lot of issues with compilation) I started with gitpod and then moved to GitHub codespaces after 1 weeks. GitHub codespaces is just miles better in terms of features AND first class integration AND reliability (I gave up on gitpod after 2 consecutive nights of not being able to connect into my pod). While I hope gitpod all the best and want them to do super well. It is hard for me to imagine going back
- ghuntley 5y ago
  <3 thanks. We are sorry to hear that you had a rough experience, know that it was terrible couple days on our side as well. If you want to catch up and share insights in person https://ghuntley.com/meet https://ghuntley.com/meet I’m also M1 (iPad and Mac) and cross-targeting needs is a boon for either Gitpod or GitHub Codespaces especially when using Nix.

237 points by ghuntley 5y ago

That’s quite a cake, and a cheeky way to put themselves into the conversation. GitPod was and is a great service and I hope they find a sustainable path forward. Of course they can support other repo hosting services, but codespaces must have been a devastating blow. Best to them.

ghuntley 5y ago
Geoff here from Gitpod. Codespaces launching is _awesome_ and we have been waiting for this moment for so long (over 2 years!) - now everyone is talking about improving developer experience. ps. If you run technical workshops I would <3 to speak with you https://www.gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code https://www.gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code
- universa1 5y ago
  very nice gesture :-) greetings from kiel <3
- IshKebab 5y ago
  Is it though? This totally sounds like "yeay... we love that you've ruined our business model, it's greeaaat!" Though I get that you can't really say that you're gutted. And at least they aren't giving Codespaces away for free, so you can at least compete. And I guess companies like Shazam and TomTom still exist, despite Google making way better free versions of their products.
  - cube2222 5y ago
    Not affiliated with anything of this at all, but this can totally be a good thing for them. GitHub entering this space gives them additional validation of the existence of a market for this kind of product and gives a lot of additional exposure to the product idea as a whole. Even if they will now get a smaller percentage of developers using this kind of tool, the rise in the total number of developers using such tools will most probably make up for it.
- gbraad 5y ago
  GitPod so far has been a better experience, unless you get access to the actually 'paid' codespaces. Dealing with branches is a pain and a fork is impossible with the GitHub web editor. GitPod has a better real desktop experience in the browser. So I can see how this can help verify the experience they are after and confirms people want. Personally been using GitPod a lot for mentoring and small workshops. (but also coder).
- thrownaway810 5y ago
  Gitpod looks awesome! I hope a CodeCommit integration is coming so I can use this in my environment. Also great work leading the charge on the COVIDSafe app last year - I knew I knew your name from somewhere!
- krrrh 5y ago
  I’ll add an anecdote here that I’ve been really looking forward to playing with codespaces, and after seeing this post earlier today I spent a bit of time playing with gitpod, and reading up on comparisons. The clear pricing, prebuilds, and simple configuration has me leaning towards trialing gitpod for our team, I doubt I would have even been aware of it without the hype around codespaces.
epolanski 5y ago
The fact that free git platforms exists all around doesn't kill dozens of profitable alternatives. The same could be said about codespaces. In fact, more people getting into codespaces is great for platforms like gitpod that can fight and offer solid alternative experiences. The issue I believe for platforms like gitpod is to shift the mindset of many devs and companies that developing in a browser isn't merely a possibility but sometimes preferable.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  > preferable Pull up a chair for a moment and consider that in this moment of time you are an open-source maintainer or a team-lead who has to review the pull-requests in the video below. Each browser tab is a brand new development environment, the git branch is automatically cloned, all dependencies are restored and your software has already been compiled. Good? Now you understand what Gitpod is all about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7BINiu_Rbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7BINiu_Rbo
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - gbraad 5y ago
    Pretty much the same here. It provides an easy view on the PR and for basic smoke tests. Have been using c9 before this, but GitPod changed a lot for the better.
- cxr 5y ago
  Many of these platforms aren't really interested in shifting the _full_ development to the browser (although they could), since that would destroy the business position they're trying to establish for themselves. JS was created to be able to run in the browser, and yet most JS developers insist on still writing or relying on metatooling that can't actually run in the browser, even if that tooling is already written in JS! It requires downloading and installing an SDK/runtime† like NodeJS, or relying on a service provider like GitPod to provide the analog (read: run the same tools, but on machines that they own and that you can communicate with via the browser viewport). If folks were really committed to improving the developer experience, then instead of what we do now and instead of what services like GitPod and Codespaces propose that we do, development would work like this: 1. Download the project source tree 2. Open README.html 3. Drag and drop the project source _onto_ README.html, which doesn't contain half explanations about setting up the appropriate development environment, so much as it contains an exact description (i.e. in executable code) of the build process—for the benefit of the machine that will perform it (along with these three steps—for the benefit of the human/prospective contributor) † See <https://www.colbyrussell.com/2019/03/06/how-to-displace-javascript.html https://www.colbyrussell.com/2019/03/06/how-to-displace-java...>
manigandham 5y ago
On the contrary, the software engineering industry is massive and market validation with more competitors is a good thing. You can build a great business just dealing with companies that don't use Github.
cknoxrun 5y ago
Personally, this post made me aware there are existing alternatives to Codespaces. Codespaces is very cool, but it also adds to an ever-growing single point of failure, which is dependence on Github for almost all of our tools and tooling. Using robust alternatives can help to spread that risk around.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Gitpod is open-source, accepts pull-requests and can be self hosted on your own infrastructure btw.

ozzydave 5y ago

Pretty curious why Facebook is listed as a customer - they built this internally ~5 years ago and wouldn’t buy it in afaik.

Sebb767 5y ago
In a large organization, it's quite common that some division buys a tool on their own, without the other divisions knowing about it. Especially in a company as large as Facebook. So realistically this means someone from Facebook gave them money at least once, not that all of FB is a customer.

enlightens 5y ago

> thus a lot of our employees are German. After an unfair vote, German Chocolate was declared the winner, but it wasn’t without some office debate as to what German Chocolate tastes like It's not from Germany, it's named after a guy named Samuel German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_chocolate_cake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_chocolate_cake ... just like a French drain is named after Henry Flagg French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_drain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_drain

belval 5y ago
Fun fact after that last one, while France will call a French drain a drain, Quebec (the French-speaking part of Canada) actually calls it a "drain Français" due to the influence of English neighbours. We translated the guy's name.
- mrosett 5y ago
  Off topic, but I got a good laugh when I learned that the French call French toast "Pain perdu Americain"
  - espadrine 5y ago
    We only call it that when we visit the US though.
  - Kydlaw 5y ago
    I'm sorry to announce you that somebody fooled you. Source: I'm french, lived in many different regions and everybody called it simply "pain perdu". Moreover, french people usually do not add the origin of a recipe like american do on a regular basis.
    - glandium 5y ago
      Also, pain perdu and French toast are different things. You don't use fresh bread for pain perdu, that would be a waste (pun intended).

up6w6 5y ago

What are the key differences between Gitpod's vscode and Coder's code-server[1] ? It seems that competition would be a lot easier if Microsoft just adds codespace's features directly to vscode. [1] https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bsksi 5y ago

The post renders completely and correctly and is promptly replaced by a 500 error that is probably fake. Modern web development is hilarious.

ghuntley 5y ago
Our fault, fix deployed. Thanks for letting me know.
- y4mi 5y ago
  I'm still encountering the same issue though :)
  - mikenikles 5y ago
    That's on me, although I haven't quite figured out what causes it :). It's all static pages. I'm going to completely remove all Javascript on pages that don't need it, which is most of them. Investigation continues...

wg0 5y ago

GitPod is awesome and of course ahead of time. I for one, however find it heartwarming - groups of humans competing against each other and cheering for each other with sweets and cakes. We, probably at the same time can be the worst and the best creature on this planet.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ignoramous 5y ago

Ah, reminds me of the good ol' browser wars: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358300 (From Redmond with Love - IE team sends cake for FF4, 2011)

glandium 5y ago
That tradition hasn't been lost. Cakes are still regularly sent. I think the last ones were https://mobile.twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1220135193991962625 https://mobile.twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1220135193991962...

doctorhandshake 5y ago

My favorite part of this marketing stunt is how classy the author was about giving maximum shine to the baker. It is indeed an excellent-looking cake and she deserves it.

tyingq 5y ago
That was nice. You can still see, though, the initial hesitancy to let the baker run with the idea. We're pretty funny as a group where we push back hard on our customers that want to peer into details. But we tend to not return the favor to other fields of expertise when we need their help. I've noticed physicians and pilots are often the same way.
- gffrd 5y ago
  A lawyer friend used to say his worst customers were engineers and doctors, who would want to understand the entire legal system before being being comfortable with a legal position.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    At the risk of showing how much I live in a bubble: Yes? How else would you do it? Not understanding seems like a great way to at best get caught flat footed and and worst unintentionally do something illegal.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
lostintangent 5y ago
Agreed! Unfortunately, most of the Codespaces team aren't even in the SF area, in order to actually receive this cake (like most modern teams, we're heavily distributed). But I love that this gave awareness for Camisha, and her unbelievable cakes.

jdorfman 5y ago

Brilliant work Geoffrey.

bla3 5y ago

That's a good-looking cake!

hbn 5y ago

Do people really type like that normally? With emojis interspersed in the middle of sentences?

moritonal 5y ago
Given the user ghuntley is claiming to be the author, and types with "<3" in their messages, it seems so? I feel like emoji's in conversation are a good middle ground for the lack of body-language?
- hbn 5y ago
  I'm not knocking emojis across the board, I use them plenty in text conversations. But with something like, > I’ve been scrolling through your facebook page and would love to work with you. HN doesn't show emojis but in his email he puts a heart after the word "love." Which seems redundant and breaks up the sentence awkwardly
  - Smaug123 5y ago
    I dunno - I'm definitely a language purist, and even so, I will admit that the emoji is not redundant. It causes the emphasis of the sentence to fall on the word "love", rather than "work". It has a similar effect to "I would *love* to work with you", but without the awkward plain-text formatting.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Sigh, newspeak (yeah I'm abusing the term)... You even have uptalk in text with 2 sentences ending in "?". People are going to downvote this because I'm going to sound (and be) patronising, but drop it, uptalk makes you sound not confident. Some guy whose girlfriend I follow on Facebook posts updates with emojis next to words, something like "We went up [Mountain emoji] Mount Cook today", etc. It's excruciating, the last time I saw something like this was when I was doing fill-in-the-blanks in kindergarten, where we had to add the words next to the picture hints, so when people write like that, yeah I think they're kindergartners.

raybb 5y ago

I personally love using gitpod for open source work. I got it setup and working for open library (https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary) and I think some people have been quite happy to not have to download them many GB of docker images to their machine to be able to do small tweaks.

illnewsthat 5y ago

The page title says "Page Not Found" which would make you think it's a 404, the page body says "500 Oh, no! Something went wrong on our side." But the actual HTTP response is 200 OK. The entire /blog section has a flash of content and then is replaced with the error message. If you view the source, you can still find the content. Oh, but if I turn off uBlock Origin and the analytics.js and newsletter-signup.js/css are allowed to load then the page loads fine. Interesting!

mikenikles 5y ago
Thanks for the many details! We continue to investigate that... I noticed the same with the Brave browser a few months ago, but when we dropped Google Analytics it worked with Brave. Diving deeper into what uBlock Origin does... Thanks!

sida 5y ago

I recently started using hosted codespaces (because I bought a apple M1 and ran into a lot of issues with compilation) I started with gitpod and then moved to GitHub codespaces after 1 weeks. GitHub codespaces is just miles better in terms of features AND first class integration AND reliability (I gave up on gitpod after 2 consecutive nights of not being able to connect into my pod). While I hope gitpod all the best and want them to do super well. It is hard for me to imagine going back

ghuntley 5y ago
<3 thanks. We are sorry to hear that you had a rough experience, know that it was terrible couple days on our side as well. If you want to catch up and share insights in person https://ghuntley.com/meet https://ghuntley.com/meet I’m also M1 (iPad and Mac) and cross-targeting needs is a boon for either Gitpod or GitHub Codespaces especially when using Nix.