> > But surely if your code base is that difficult to setup your dev environment for - it’s likely a sign of much bigger problems? You're misinterpreting ease

> > But surely if your code base is that difficult to setup your dev environment for - it’s likely a sign of much bigger problems? You're misinterpreting ease of setup as a solution to "it's difficult", from what I assume is a bias; the two are not the same coin. Docker based development, which is what devcontainers is a template for, works in Linux too and is a useful way of having everything ready to go. You can of course put instructions in a README, this is one step further than that which is to prepare a docker image. > where as in my experience with software you’re developing for Nix it’s not really a big deal. Usually you’re just checking out the repo(s) and running your languages command to install the libs. That isn't entirely true about nix environments, or it depends which *nix environments you mean. On Linux, yes it can be pretty much clone and go (install dependencies where needed). A very "close 2nd" is WSL2 on Windows as it's also just... Linux. On Macos you need to perform a series of brew gymnastics to get the environment into shape because all the included defaults are practically insults. If you're considering that clone and go, then you might be doing it so frequently that you don't equate it to a difficult to set up environment. However even on Linux, it depends on the kind of development you're doing, because if you've ever worked with Cuda/Torch/Tensorflow, then you know that isn't necessarily a smooth experience but has to be carefully controlled.