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> Yes. Because local development environments (at least for the languages I work with, Python and JavaScript) break ALL THE TIME. Whatever breaks software envi

by kodah 4y ago

> Yes. Because local development environments (at least for the languages I work with, Python and JavaScript) break ALL THE TIME. Whatever breaks software environments on the desktop will also break them in a remote compute environment; unless, of course, you put your entire product in a container and use a framework that supports hot code reloading. In which, you can do on a desktop for free. > The browser-based cloud IDE experience, where it doesn't matter what you've got going on with your laptop, you just visit a URL and start work, is an incredible productivity boost for the vast majority of people. A users browser is still impacted by things running locally. I'm not sure a web-IDE buys you anything except not running file watchers (which is nice). I never actually questioned the value of a web based IDE until this moment, and that gives me some pause.

chrischen 4y ago
I agree. I use Neovim and my setup constantly break when upgrading plugins. I could avoid this pretty much by just using Visual Studio Code, but that in my opinion is pretty close to these Web IDEs already.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
>Whatever breaks software environments on the desktop will also break them in a remote compute environment; I was in agreement with you initially but then thinking about it - if it breaks remotely it most likely breaks for everyone in the same way, breaking locally may be all sorts of reasons - you could have several people broken at any time for different reasons. For some projects and companies having the remote setup might make sense for this reason. Also, dependent on what you're doing you might need to run a bunch of services that your laptop isn't powerful enough to handle. This happened with my last project where there were 30+ microservices each in a docker container, 3 frontend environments in docker containers, all running in vagrant (vagrant was gotten rid of when the latest Docker release happened, but I didn't update to get the new experience cause my contract was running out) Sometimes there were issues when I needed to work on several things together.
- kodah 4y ago
  A container that runs on one dev laptop will (most likely) run on another, unless there's some weird architecture compatibility stuff. Even then, I think the M1s are doing fine and my old boss used to stand our entire fleet up on his Chromebook. With respect to the latter, I'm not sure that a web IDE (without paying monthly cost) would solve this problem. At that point one might as well run an entire developer cluster. That's the way I designed my teams stack.
simonw 4y ago
> Whatever breaks software environments on the desktop will also break them in a remote compute environment The joy of remote environments is that they can be disposable. Break your environment? Click a link, get a brand new one that's guaranteed to work (thanks to automated testing marking known good configurations). Helping with three different bugs at once? Use three environments, so your work doesn't conflict with itself.
- kodah 4y ago
  Sort of? A container is disposed of the same way, remote or local - state along with it.

by kodah 4y ago

chrischen 4y ago

I agree. I use Neovim and my setup constantly break when upgrading plugins. I could avoid this pretty much by just using Visual Studio Code, but that in my opinion is pretty close to these Web IDEs already.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

>Whatever breaks software environments on the desktop will also break them in a remote compute environment; I was in agreement with you initially but then thinking about it - if it breaks remotely it most likely breaks for everyone in the same way, breaking locally may be all sorts of reasons - you could have several people broken at any time for different reasons. For some projects and companies having the remote setup might make sense for this reason. Also, dependent on what you're doing you might need to run a bunch of services that your laptop isn't powerful enough to handle. This happened with my last project where there were 30+ microservices each in a docker container, 3 frontend environments in docker containers, all running in vagrant (vagrant was gotten rid of when the latest Docker release happened, but I didn't update to get the new experience cause my contract was running out) Sometimes there were issues when I needed to work on several things together.

kodah 4y ago
A container that runs on one dev laptop will (most likely) run on another, unless there's some weird architecture compatibility stuff. Even then, I think the M1s are doing fine and my old boss used to stand our entire fleet up on his Chromebook. With respect to the latter, I'm not sure that a web IDE (without paying monthly cost) would solve this problem. At that point one might as well run an entire developer cluster. That's the way I designed my teams stack.

simonw 4y ago

> Whatever breaks software environments on the desktop will also break them in a remote compute environment The joy of remote environments is that they can be disposable. Break your environment? Click a link, get a brand new one that's guaranteed to work (thanks to automated testing marking known good configurations). Helping with three different bugs at once? Use three environments, so your work doesn't conflict with itself.

kodah 4y ago
Sort of? A container is disposed of the same way, remote or local - state along with it.