Well, you don't have to of course but that does not mean others are like you. Also, it's not necessarily all browser based. The same thing running as an electro

Well, you don't have to of course but that does not mean others are like you. Also, it's not necessarily all browser based. The same thing running as an electron app is probably not that big of a deal. I've not yet used a lot of remote tooling. But I routinely ssh into remote servers and I can see the appeal of not having my laptop running scorching hot all the time (I use Intellij a lot). Also financially it's not a bad deal. Pay a few tens of dollars per month and use a relatively simple laptop to access the remote setup. I wouldn't mind paying a little extra for some extra fast CPU if I can do it by hour. Of course what Gitlab does is not that interesting. But e.g. Jetbrains closing a deal with Gitpod (which already runs their IDEs in the cloud) is a potentially a big deal. I could see myself giving that a spin at some point.