20 ms·

This seems really cool, and seems like it took a lot of man hours to put together. However, I'm not sure who this is for. Downloading and installing an applica

This seems really cool, and seems like it took a lot of man hours to put together. However, I'm not sure who this is for. Downloading and installing an application is not a particularly big ask for the type of people who use VSCode. The browser version will always be a compromised experience, given the inherent limitations of browser applications. Even if it works 99% of the time, that 1% would add enough friction to make it more of a hassle then it's worth. The post gave some use cases involving hardware that can't easily run Desktop VSCode (e.g. iPads and Chromebooks). I just don't see that being much of a use case though, except in desperate circumstances where a more capable dev machine isn't available. If there are some use cases I'm missing, I'd love to hear about them! This is a pretty new concept, and I certainly don't know how everyone likes to code. But from my perspective, I struggle to see any situation where someone would choose to use this, and few situations where someone would have to.

patrickserrano 5y ago
Honestly, this looks amazing for times when I'm in a meeting and want to look a piece of more complex code but don't have a local copy of the repo. The Azure DevOps repo UI leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you know where a piece of code is called from but don't know where it's defined off the top of your head.
canada_dry 5y ago
> I'm not sure who this is for. Especially since many extensions are incompatible.
makeitdouble 5y ago
> iPads and Chromebooks). I just don't see that being much of a use case though, except in desperate circumstances where a more capable dev machine isn't available. A number of schools dispatch iPads and Chromebooks to their students. They can hook a keyboard and a mouse, and with vscode.dev they now have a decent dev machine. Sure parents could buy a windows/linux/macos laptop, but outside of the cost, maintenance is not trivial (parents wishing to restrict access to whatever resource will have a harder time) To push a bit farther, there are pretty powerful and usable Chromebooks, and iPads are now on par with most laptop when it comes to processing power, especially JS. Extending their role to be able to code a bunch is nothing to sneeze at.
jasonkester 5y ago
I'm not sure who this is for. I guess it’s for me, 15 years ago, backpacking across Southeast Asia without a laptop and stopping at Internet cafes to work on a side project. Back then, I had built a little ghetto web ide out of a textarea and chosen php for the project in question because it didn’t need a compile step. Today, this would let me do my thing in c# as nature intended. But then also, today has crazy fast two pound laptops that would fit in that tiny bag I had back then. And no Internet cafes anymore. So maybe not for me today, I guess.
n8cpdx 5y ago
Students and kids with chrome books - a huge amount of middle and high school students in the US. Students who Microsoft would like to grow up thinking software development = Visual Studio.
maybeOneDay 5y ago
Some non western countries have student/junior freelance developer populations comprised almost entirely of people using mobile devices for development. I imagine this will be a god send for them
windowsrookie 5y ago
Tablets for sure. There are no good coding apps on Tablets. Say you're going on a trip somewhere and don't feel comfortable bringing your $3,000 laptop. Pickup a $150 android tablet + keyboard. Or low income individuals, you could start coding right from your phone without having to buy anything new.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  There a couple of nice coding apps in Android and iOS, naturally they are mostly for coding on the train/plane, or tying out ideas at the local coffee shop, but that is good enough for me.
- jpindar 5y ago
  I just tried it and it mostly works in Chrome on Android, except that I can't right-click because Chrome uses that to go back. Anyone know how to disable that in Chrome?
tppiotrowski 5y ago
Downloading and installing is a big ask if you don’t have the required system permissions (computer labs, work issued laptops, Chromebooks). Another data point: I used to compile VSCode for ARM to run it on a RaspberryPi and had to do it anytime there was an update.
- joe5150 5y ago
  VSCode will happily (and automatically) install under the user directory with no admin privileges on Windows, FWIW.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  So you as a developer are not allowed to install a code editor... To edit code... Which is... Your profession... So you need to use a Web browser as a code editor because... Installing a binary to the disk is not allowed? It's crazy!
  - conductr 5y ago
    I work in finance and as you’d guess my main app is Excel. 9/10 big companies I worked for are on a >5 year old license at any given point. Since it’s so heavily tied in with outlook, exchange, etc. and they typically tie a office version to a windows version these days, it’s so frustrating constantly having to use outdated software for no good reason. As you said, it’s crazy!
    - dolmen 5y ago
      There are good reasons: some of your finance colleagues have done crazy spreadsheets with that old Excel version and everybody fears of breaking business if those critical spreadsheets break.
      - conductr 5y ago
        That’s not usually the case. That’s what IT department thinks is the reason, but finance can and does deal with broken files all the time for a variety of reasons. I think what you’re referencing is when the IT department asks me and my team, do any processes break if we change version’s? And the answer is always, please we’ve been asking for years. Occasionally there is an add on we use that becomes a dependency. I feel like that was more of an issue in the past. Now that basically everything is 64 bit compatible, we do some testing and tell IT no risk here. Excel has good support for rolling forward. Not always backwards compatible, but going forward breaking is quite rare. Things like XLS to XLSX happen rarely and they still largely work moving forward. When I talk to the IT guys it’s more about reliance on exchange servers, outlook/calendar, and of course the corporate licensing that makes upgrading just for us finance guys difficult
Androider 5y ago
Surely shoving VSCode into a tab is just step 1. Think about what this could do, that your local app couldn't. Off the top of my head: Complete remote state. Open vscode.dev on your desktop, work for a while. Then open vscode.dev on your Macbook Air later, and be in _exactly_ the same state. I don't mean, the same project, I mean the text cursor is at the same position in the same file with the same set of tabs open. Need a GPU for some CUDA work? The only question is how many GPU cores would you like. Could your next engineering hire's onboarding guide be: open vscode.dev/company/workspace, click the "run all tests" button. OK, you're done, please pick the topmost "ready to start" ticket from the queue.
- SCUSKU 5y ago
  I have been a very happy user of VSCode Remote - SSH. I have a VM in AWS with a GPU that I SSH into using VSCode, and I can use VSCode as if I were running it locally, with all of the computer power of a big server. Would highly recommend!
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Geoff here from Gitpod. I have a bare metal machine that I remote into and use for supportive tasks such as (in a couple moments) exploring the TruNAS marketplace ecosystem. My primary computer these days is an iPad - see https://ghuntley.com/anywhere https://ghuntley.com/anywhere There are big changes happening in development ecosystem which will happen faster then people realize. Soon more than 80% of the IDE market will have built-in functionality to connect to developer environments running in the cloud, while keeping the editing experience you are used to from your Desktop application in a very short time and Gitpod’s IDE architect went into detail about this over at http://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history http://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history
- gkfasdfasdf 5y ago
  Saving state sounds pretty awesome indeed, but does it really work like that? From the blog post it sounded like it is opening files on the local filesystem.
- tmaly 5y ago
matthewhammond 5y ago
For me the point is more around generally pushing things towards the cloud and away from snowflake local environments. One click app generation from templates, one click deploys of your app to ephemeral environments for testing and sharing... all without requiring any setup, and integrated into GitHub for collaboration. Want to onboard someone to working on your app, just send them a hyperlink to the repo.
wffurr 5y ago
FTA: "This simple gateway to the local machine quickly opens some interesting scenarios for using VS Code for the Web as a zero-installation local development tool, such as: * Local file viewing and editing. Quickly take notes (and preview!) in Markdown. Even if you are on a restricted machine where you cannot install the full VS Code, you may still be able to use vscode.dev to view and edit local files. * Build client-side HTML, JavaScript, and CSS applications in conjunction with the browser tools for debugging. * Edit your code on lower powered machines like Chromebooks, where you can't (easily) install VS Code. * Develop on your iPad. You can upload/download files (and even store them in the cloud using the Files app), as well as open repositories remotely with the built-in GitHub Repositories extension." Also various interesting URLs are now possible: "For example, change https://github.com/microsoft/vscode https://github.com/microsoft/vscode to 'https://vscode.dev/github.com/Microsoft/vscode https://vscode.dev/github.com/Microsoft/vscode'. For Azure Repos, do the same. Change https://dev.azure.com/… https://dev.azure.com/… to 'https://vscode.dev/dev.azure.com https://vscode.dev/dev.azure.com /…'." "As you can see, vscode.dev URLs are a powerful way for us to deliver new, lightweight experiences. Another example is that Live Share guest sessions will also be available in the browser through the https://vscode.dev/liveshare https://vscode.dev/liveshare URL. The sessionId will be passed to the extension to make joining a seamless experience."
- dolmen 5y ago
  > Local file viewing and editing. Quickly take notes (and preview!) in Markdown. Even if you are on a restricted machine where you cannot install the full VS Code, you may still be able to use vscode.dev to view and edit local files. If the sysadmin has blocked install of VSCode for security reason, I would also expect (s)he also blocked access to the special API that gives access to local files from browser.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Your solutions are to problems that a decent developer doesn't accept anyway. Working on locked down machine where you are not allowed to have visual code? Seriously? Working on a chromebook? Why? Sorry to be negative but I feel sometimes you tech guys get excited about solutions to problems that doesn't actually exist in the real world.
coldtea 5y ago
>However, I'm not sure who this is for. Downloading and installing an application is not a particularly big ask for the type of people who use VSCode It's like how nerdy types could easily slap together their own Dropbox, with rsync and duct tape (as per the famous comment), but most didn't - plus the world is not just full of types who'd do it. And then MS can start adding all kinds of collaboration tools built in, from pair coding to bug tracking, time tracking and so on. I can imagine an enterprise giving devs just this + something like local/Cloud VPS/CI/CD environment to work in. Immediately reproducible, no hassle, secure, and so on. >The browser version will always be a compromised experience, given the inherent limitation Well, offline VSCode is a glorified browser as well.
- glitchc 5y ago
  Not to mention corporate rules.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Why bother with all of that when you could just ssh (nee telnet), remote X or VNC sessions to a server? Apparently current generation never worked in classical UNIX development environments.
- JasonCannon 5y ago
  >Well, offline VSCode is a glorified browser as well. Not really, it may use electron for the front end, but a huge amount of what makes vscode useful and fast is the native binaries that power all of its functionality.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    What are those native binaries? I know that VSCode ships with ripgrep, but that's the limit of my knowledge. Those binaries probably could be compiled to WASM to make VSCode fully run in a browser too.
    - JasonCannon 5y ago
      The Language Servers that power all of the intellisense and syntax highlighting and stuff are all native code. As are the compilers and everything that make VSCode more than just a text editor.
newsbinator 5y ago
In Safari: > Your current browser doesn't support local file system access. > You can either upload single files or open a remote repository.
aquova 5y ago
I'm not sure what the use of the standalone site is, however Microsoft has already integrated VSCode-in-a-browser into Github. If you go to a Github file and press . then that repository will open up in a VSCode instance in browser. It's quite useful to have it's search features rather than needing to clone down a project first.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  This VSCode.dev standalone site adds Azure Repos support in addition to Github.dev's existing GitHub support, and they say it will be extendable by extensions so maybe hope for Gitlab/Bitbucket/Gitea/Sourcehut/who knows who else to add this sort of remote dev experience that the Github dot shortcut does. Also, there's a new "Theme Preview Playground" which lets you write URLs to try theme extensions before you download them.
WorldMaker 5y ago
I've used the github.dev "." shortcut (on any repo in Github press dot to jump to github.dev) a few times to browse the code "more comfortably" with many of my VS Code extensions (via Settings Sync) without needing the time to clone locally. (There is a way to get one of the Github extensions locally to give you a Remote Repository experience in a local VS Code window, but that dot shortcut is much more convenient.) I've even forked and made small (mostly Markdown) PRs that way now. I'm excited that VSCode.dev now supports the same thing with my company's current Azure Repos. Maybe they can give us a dot shortcut there now too. (If anyone is still active enough work on it to make such a change.) Though I think the big new use case (that a lot of people are overlooking) is the new Theme Preview Playground use case in the article towards the bottom is a pretty great one. For instance, here's the VSCode theme I currently use because it shiny and rad and totally tubular: https://vscode.dev/theme/jaredkent.laserwave https://vscode.dev/theme/jaredkent.laserwave You don't have to download the theme to try it. It opens a fake workspace with several examples of code highlighting to get a feel for the theme. If you've got Settings Sync turned on you'll see how it interacts with your other settings (like which side you keep the "explorer bar" on) and if you decide to Keep the theme by clicking the button in the notification it pops up, your other devices will install the extension automatically and start to use it as soon as they next sync. It's pretty neat and the article implies it's the first "playground" of this sort and probably not the last as they get other ideas of extension types people might prefer to test before they download.
CJefferson 5y ago
I teach coding to new programmers, in particular kids, and every step is a pain. In particular, since we had to go fully remote it's really hard to even get people started. Anything where I can just say "go to this website, start typing python/javascript, see cool stuff happen" is cool.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Hey, Geoff from Gitpod here. I agree! Check out https://gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code https://gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  Teaching code is hard enough, anything that makes the process easier, especially at the start, is greatly welcome.
pjmlp 5y ago
Taking Electron to the death row.
Godel_unicode 5y ago
> ...the type of people who use VSCode This type of gatekeeping helps no one. We should be optimizing for lowering barriers to entry, not justifying making an already hard problem (learning to code) harder. > ...except in desperate circumstances... Some 15% of American adults are smartphone only. That percentage rises very quickly once you look outside of the G20. Those are also some of the people most likely to have their lives drastically improved by having access to the ability to code. The fact that you don't have a usecase for a tool absolutely does not mean that such a usecase does not exist, nor does it make that usecase less valuable.
brundolf 5y ago
I suspect those "inherent limitations" will continue disappearing over time. It wasn't that long ago that file-system access was one of the biggest ones. WASM and/or Workers could bridge the gap on language servers, building/running code, etc. Not much would be left at that point And I think there are definitely cases where installing is a barrier to entry; think about people in locked-down enterprise environments, or students coding for the first time (on their own computers or otherwise). We're talking about an IDE becoming as readily available as Notepad (or even more so, since it's available on all platforms)
paxys 5y ago
Being able to run VS Code with only browser APIs and no Electron/Node.js is still a big win for PWA proponents even if it doesn't offer anything new.
rattlesnakedave 5y ago
>However, I'm not sure who this is for. Downloading and installing an application is not a particularly big ask for the type of people who use VSCode. True, but IMO doing anything we possibly can to get from individuals who want to code -> actually coding faster and easier with minimal setup is a huge win. I remember starting out using codeblocks for C++. My biggest hurdle was figuring out how to get a compiler integrated with the IDE. https://repl.it https://repl.it is doing first class work in this space. I highly recommend you check them out as well.
outside1234 5y ago
The use case is Codespaces. Codespaces is magic because it allows you to go from zero to fully configured dev environment, even for the most complicated environments, in five minutes via a preconfigured dev container VSCode in the browser allows you to do this, but is only part of the story, and without the dev container, you miss the really valuable part of that story.
pfisherman 5y ago
I dunno. It would be pretty sweet to not have to bring a laptop with me when I travel / go places. Just whip out the iPad, open a browser, connect to remote host, and get to work. The caveat of course is that this supports connecting to a remote host.
jackson1442 5y ago
> The post gave some use cases involving hardware that can't easily run Desktop VSCode (e.g. iPads and Chromebooks). I just don't see that being much of a use case though, except in desperate circumstances where a more capable dev machine isn't available. This is _huge_ for education. Many school districts are distributing managed chromebooks to each student because of their low cost of ownership and really all you could code on with those was replit.com. VS Code in the browser allows you to expose students to a programming environment just like what they'd use professionally. This isn't meant for the developer with the latest 16" MacBook Pro, it's meant for people who can't necessarily install vscode on their machine. Maybe it's on a shared machine at a library and they can't install software, or maybe it's a Chromebook.
- Marciplan 5y ago
  I’m excited for it being able to, I believe, do a bit of coding on my iPad :)

patrickserrano 5y ago

Honestly, this looks amazing for times when I'm in a meeting and want to look a piece of more complex code but don't have a local copy of the repo. The Azure DevOps repo UI leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you know where a piece of code is called from but don't know where it's defined off the top of your head.

canada_dry 5y ago

> I'm not sure who this is for. Especially since many extensions are incompatible.

makeitdouble 5y ago

> iPads and Chromebooks). I just don't see that being much of a use case though, except in desperate circumstances where a more capable dev machine isn't available. A number of schools dispatch iPads and Chromebooks to their students. They can hook a keyboard and a mouse, and with vscode.dev they now have a decent dev machine. Sure parents could buy a windows/linux/macos laptop, but outside of the cost, maintenance is not trivial (parents wishing to restrict access to whatever resource will have a harder time) To push a bit farther, there are pretty powerful and usable Chromebooks, and iPads are now on par with most laptop when it comes to processing power, especially JS. Extending their role to be able to code a bunch is nothing to sneeze at.

jasonkester 5y ago

I'm not sure who this is for. I guess it’s for me, 15 years ago, backpacking across Southeast Asia without a laptop and stopping at Internet cafes to work on a side project. Back then, I had built a little ghetto web ide out of a textarea and chosen php for the project in question because it didn’t need a compile step. Today, this would let me do my thing in c# as nature intended. But then also, today has crazy fast two pound laptops that would fit in that tiny bag I had back then. And no Internet cafes anymore. So maybe not for me today, I guess.

n8cpdx 5y ago

Students and kids with chrome books - a huge amount of middle and high school students in the US. Students who Microsoft would like to grow up thinking software development = Visual Studio.

maybeOneDay 5y ago

Some non western countries have student/junior freelance developer populations comprised almost entirely of people using mobile devices for development. I imagine this will be a god send for them

windowsrookie 5y ago

Tablets for sure. There are no good coding apps on Tablets. Say you're going on a trip somewhere and don't feel comfortable bringing your $3,000 laptop. Pickup a $150 android tablet + keyboard. Or low income individuals, you could start coding right from your phone without having to buy anything new.

pjmlp 5y ago
There a couple of nice coding apps in Android and iOS, naturally they are mostly for coding on the train/plane, or tying out ideas at the local coffee shop, but that is good enough for me.
jpindar 5y ago
I just tried it and it mostly works in Chrome on Android, except that I can't right-click because Chrome uses that to go back. Anyone know how to disable that in Chrome?

tppiotrowski 5y ago

Downloading and installing is a big ask if you don’t have the required system permissions (computer labs, work issued laptops, Chromebooks). Another data point: I used to compile VSCode for ARM to run it on a RaspberryPi and had to do it anytime there was an update.

joe5150 5y ago
VSCode will happily (and automatically) install under the user directory with no admin privileges on Windows, FWIW.
peakaboo 5y ago
So you as a developer are not allowed to install a code editor... To edit code... Which is... Your profession... So you need to use a Web browser as a code editor because... Installing a binary to the disk is not allowed? It's crazy!
- conductr 5y ago
  I work in finance and as you’d guess my main app is Excel. 9/10 big companies I worked for are on a >5 year old license at any given point. Since it’s so heavily tied in with outlook, exchange, etc. and they typically tie a office version to a windows version these days, it’s so frustrating constantly having to use outdated software for no good reason. As you said, it’s crazy!
  - dolmen 5y ago
    There are good reasons: some of your finance colleagues have done crazy spreadsheets with that old Excel version and everybody fears of breaking business if those critical spreadsheets break.
    - conductr 5y ago
      That’s not usually the case. That’s what IT department thinks is the reason, but finance can and does deal with broken files all the time for a variety of reasons. I think what you’re referencing is when the IT department asks me and my team, do any processes break if we change version’s? And the answer is always, please we’ve been asking for years. Occasionally there is an add on we use that becomes a dependency. I feel like that was more of an issue in the past. Now that basically everything is 64 bit compatible, we do some testing and tell IT no risk here. Excel has good support for rolling forward. Not always backwards compatible, but going forward breaking is quite rare. Things like XLS to XLSX happen rarely and they still largely work moving forward. When I talk to the IT guys it’s more about reliance on exchange servers, outlook/calendar, and of course the corporate licensing that makes upgrading just for us finance guys difficult

Androider 5y ago

Surely shoving VSCode into a tab is just step 1. Think about what this could do, that your local app couldn't. Off the top of my head: Complete remote state. Open vscode.dev on your desktop, work for a while. Then open vscode.dev on your Macbook Air later, and be in _exactly_ the same state. I don't mean, the same project, I mean the text cursor is at the same position in the same file with the same set of tabs open. Need a GPU for some CUDA work? The only question is how many GPU cores would you like. Could your next engineering hire's onboarding guide be: open vscode.dev/company/workspace, click the "run all tests" button. OK, you're done, please pick the topmost "ready to start" ticket from the queue.

SCUSKU 5y ago
I have been a very happy user of VSCode Remote - SSH. I have a VM in AWS with a GPU that I SSH into using VSCode, and I can use VSCode as if I were running it locally, with all of the computer power of a big server. Would highly recommend!
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Geoff here from Gitpod. I have a bare metal machine that I remote into and use for supportive tasks such as (in a couple moments) exploring the TruNAS marketplace ecosystem. My primary computer these days is an iPad - see https://ghuntley.com/anywhere https://ghuntley.com/anywhere There are big changes happening in development ecosystem which will happen faster then people realize. Soon more than 80% of the IDE market will have built-in functionality to connect to developer environments running in the cloud, while keeping the editing experience you are used to from your Desktop application in a very short time and Gitpod’s IDE architect went into detail about this over at http://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history http://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history
gkfasdfasdf 5y ago
Saving state sounds pretty awesome indeed, but does it really work like that? From the blog post it sounded like it is opening files on the local filesystem.
tmaly 5y ago

matthewhammond 5y ago

For me the point is more around generally pushing things towards the cloud and away from snowflake local environments. One click app generation from templates, one click deploys of your app to ephemeral environments for testing and sharing... all without requiring any setup, and integrated into GitHub for collaboration. Want to onboard someone to working on your app, just send them a hyperlink to the repo.

wffurr 5y ago

FTA: "This simple gateway to the local machine quickly opens some interesting scenarios for using VS Code for the Web as a zero-installation local development tool, such as: * Local file viewing and editing. Quickly take notes (and preview!) in Markdown. Even if you are on a restricted machine where you cannot install the full VS Code, you may still be able to use vscode.dev to view and edit local files. * Build client-side HTML, JavaScript, and CSS applications in conjunction with the browser tools for debugging. * Edit your code on lower powered machines like Chromebooks, where you can't (easily) install VS Code. * Develop on your iPad. You can upload/download files (and even store them in the cloud using the Files app), as well as open repositories remotely with the built-in GitHub Repositories extension." Also various interesting URLs are now possible: "For example, change https://github.com/microsoft/vscode https://github.com/microsoft/vscode to 'https://vscode.dev/github.com/Microsoft/vscode https://vscode.dev/github.com/Microsoft/vscode'. For Azure Repos, do the same. Change https://dev.azure.com/… https://dev.azure.com/… to 'https://vscode.dev/dev.azure.com https://vscode.dev/dev.azure.com /…'." "As you can see, vscode.dev URLs are a powerful way for us to deliver new, lightweight experiences. Another example is that Live Share guest sessions will also be available in the browser through the https://vscode.dev/liveshare https://vscode.dev/liveshare URL. The sessionId will be passed to the extension to make joining a seamless experience."

dolmen 5y ago
> Local file viewing and editing. Quickly take notes (and preview!) in Markdown. Even if you are on a restricted machine where you cannot install the full VS Code, you may still be able to use vscode.dev to view and edit local files. If the sysadmin has blocked install of VSCode for security reason, I would also expect (s)he also blocked access to the special API that gives access to local files from browser.
peakaboo 5y ago
Your solutions are to problems that a decent developer doesn't accept anyway. Working on locked down machine where you are not allowed to have visual code? Seriously? Working on a chromebook? Why? Sorry to be negative but I feel sometimes you tech guys get excited about solutions to problems that doesn't actually exist in the real world.

coldtea 5y ago

>However, I'm not sure who this is for. Downloading and installing an application is not a particularly big ask for the type of people who use VSCode It's like how nerdy types could easily slap together their own Dropbox, with rsync and duct tape (as per the famous comment), but most didn't - plus the world is not just full of types who'd do it. And then MS can start adding all kinds of collaboration tools built in, from pair coding to bug tracking, time tracking and so on. I can imagine an enterprise giving devs just this + something like local/Cloud VPS/CI/CD environment to work in. Immediately reproducible, no hassle, secure, and so on. >The browser version will always be a compromised experience, given the inherent limitation Well, offline VSCode is a glorified browser as well.

glitchc 5y ago
Not to mention corporate rules.
pjmlp 5y ago
Why bother with all of that when you could just ssh (nee telnet), remote X or VNC sessions to a server? Apparently current generation never worked in classical UNIX development environments.
JasonCannon 5y ago
>Well, offline VSCode is a glorified browser as well. Not really, it may use electron for the front end, but a huge amount of what makes vscode useful and fast is the native binaries that power all of its functionality.
- Zababa 5y ago
  What are those native binaries? I know that VSCode ships with ripgrep, but that's the limit of my knowledge. Those binaries probably could be compiled to WASM to make VSCode fully run in a browser too.
  - JasonCannon 5y ago
    The Language Servers that power all of the intellisense and syntax highlighting and stuff are all native code. As are the compilers and everything that make VSCode more than just a text editor.

newsbinator 5y ago

In Safari: > Your current browser doesn't support local file system access. > You can either upload single files or open a remote repository.

aquova 5y ago

I'm not sure what the use of the standalone site is, however Microsoft has already integrated VSCode-in-a-browser into Github. If you go to a Github file and press . then that repository will open up in a VSCode instance in browser. It's quite useful to have it's search features rather than needing to clone down a project first.

WorldMaker 5y ago
This VSCode.dev standalone site adds Azure Repos support in addition to Github.dev's existing GitHub support, and they say it will be extendable by extensions so maybe hope for Gitlab/Bitbucket/Gitea/Sourcehut/who knows who else to add this sort of remote dev experience that the Github dot shortcut does. Also, there's a new "Theme Preview Playground" which lets you write URLs to try theme extensions before you download them.

WorldMaker 5y ago

I've used the github.dev "." shortcut (on any repo in Github press dot to jump to github.dev) a few times to browse the code "more comfortably" with many of my VS Code extensions (via Settings Sync) without needing the time to clone locally. (There is a way to get one of the Github extensions locally to give you a Remote Repository experience in a local VS Code window, but that dot shortcut is much more convenient.) I've even forked and made small (mostly Markdown) PRs that way now. I'm excited that VSCode.dev now supports the same thing with my company's current Azure Repos. Maybe they can give us a dot shortcut there now too. (If anyone is still active enough work on it to make such a change.) Though I think the big new use case (that a lot of people are overlooking) is the new Theme Preview Playground use case in the article towards the bottom is a pretty great one. For instance, here's the VSCode theme I currently use because it shiny and rad and totally tubular: https://vscode.dev/theme/jaredkent.laserwave https://vscode.dev/theme/jaredkent.laserwave You don't have to download the theme to try it. It opens a fake workspace with several examples of code highlighting to get a feel for the theme. If you've got Settings Sync turned on you'll see how it interacts with your other settings (like which side you keep the "explorer bar" on) and if you decide to Keep the theme by clicking the button in the notification it pops up, your other devices will install the extension automatically and start to use it as soon as they next sync. It's pretty neat and the article implies it's the first "playground" of this sort and probably not the last as they get other ideas of extension types people might prefer to test before they download.

CJefferson 5y ago

I teach coding to new programmers, in particular kids, and every step is a pain. In particular, since we had to go fully remote it's really hard to even get people started. Anything where I can just say "go to this website, start typing python/javascript, see cool stuff happen" is cool.

ghuntley 5y ago
Hey, Geoff from Gitpod here. I agree! Check out https://gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code https://gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code
jonny_eh 5y ago
Teaching code is hard enough, anything that makes the process easier, especially at the start, is greatly welcome.

pjmlp 5y ago

Taking Electron to the death row.

Godel_unicode 5y ago

> ...the type of people who use VSCode This type of gatekeeping helps no one. We should be optimizing for lowering barriers to entry, not justifying making an already hard problem (learning to code) harder. > ...except in desperate circumstances... Some 15% of American adults are smartphone only. That percentage rises very quickly once you look outside of the G20. Those are also some of the people most likely to have their lives drastically improved by having access to the ability to code. The fact that you don't have a usecase for a tool absolutely does not mean that such a usecase does not exist, nor does it make that usecase less valuable.

brundolf 5y ago

I suspect those "inherent limitations" will continue disappearing over time. It wasn't that long ago that file-system access was one of the biggest ones. WASM and/or Workers could bridge the gap on language servers, building/running code, etc. Not much would be left at that point And I think there are definitely cases where installing is a barrier to entry; think about people in locked-down enterprise environments, or students coding for the first time (on their own computers or otherwise). We're talking about an IDE becoming as readily available as Notepad (or even more so, since it's available on all platforms)

paxys 5y ago

Being able to run VS Code with only browser APIs and no Electron/Node.js is still a big win for PWA proponents even if it doesn't offer anything new.

rattlesnakedave 5y ago

>However, I'm not sure who this is for. Downloading and installing an application is not a particularly big ask for the type of people who use VSCode. True, but IMO doing anything we possibly can to get from individuals who want to code -> actually coding faster and easier with minimal setup is a huge win. I remember starting out using codeblocks for C++. My biggest hurdle was figuring out how to get a compiler integrated with the IDE. https://repl.it https://repl.it is doing first class work in this space. I highly recommend you check them out as well.

outside1234 5y ago

The use case is Codespaces. Codespaces is magic because it allows you to go from zero to fully configured dev environment, even for the most complicated environments, in five minutes via a preconfigured dev container VSCode in the browser allows you to do this, but is only part of the story, and without the dev container, you miss the really valuable part of that story.

pfisherman 5y ago

I dunno. It would be pretty sweet to not have to bring a laptop with me when I travel / go places. Just whip out the iPad, open a browser, connect to remote host, and get to work. The caveat of course is that this supports connecting to a remote host.

jackson1442 5y ago

> The post gave some use cases involving hardware that can't easily run Desktop VSCode (e.g. iPads and Chromebooks). I just don't see that being much of a use case though, except in desperate circumstances where a more capable dev machine isn't available. This is _huge_ for education. Many school districts are distributing managed chromebooks to each student because of their low cost of ownership and really all you could code on with those was replit.com. VS Code in the browser allows you to expose students to a programming environment just like what they'd use professionally. This isn't meant for the developer with the latest 16" MacBook Pro, it's meant for people who can't necessarily install vscode on their machine. Maybe it's on a shared machine at a library and they can't install software, or maybe it's a Chromebook.

Marciplan 5y ago
I’m excited for it being able to, I believe, do a bit of coding on my iPad :)