[HN Gopher] Web-based editor
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Web-based editor
        
       Author : pjmlp
       Score  : 494 points
       Date   : 2021-09-03 09:14 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (docs.github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (docs.github.com)
        
       | xkgt wrote:
       | Is this similar to what github1s.com offered?
        
         | sidk24 wrote:
         | I am still proud of
         | [github1s](https://github.com/conwnet/github1s) No Credits
         | given :( => https://github.com/conwnet/github1s/issues/346
        
         | tehbeard wrote:
         | Yes, but with write access and commiting from the page (vs 1s'
         | readonly approach), as well as some extensions working (or
         | atleast, it filters better than 1s and only shows those that do
         | work).
        
           | sidk24 wrote:
           | but for code editing, we have collaborated with gitpod.io :)
        
             | tehbeard wrote:
             | That would be vs. github codespaces though wouldn't it?
        
               | sidk24 wrote:
               | but gitpod is there before it!
        
       | wodenokoto wrote:
       | I thought it was amazing when someone showed me 4 years ago that
       | you can access RStudio feature complete in a browser. Data and
       | compute lives air gapped on the server and the developers device
       | is just a thin client.
       | 
       | Great to see other development tool picking up the same usecase.
        
       | rapnie wrote:
       | Opens up some very attractive features for the developer. The
       | amount of vendor lock-in that this will create over time is
       | spectacular. Can we glean something of how the future of software
       | development looks like? Thinking especially of open-source
       | projects here.
        
         | tehbeard wrote:
         | I'm not sure what attractive features you mean?
         | 
         | You can't build/compile/test within this, you'd have to lean on
         | GitHub Actions open in another tab to check that, and actions
         | seems more focused towards automating tests / releases after a
         | feature is pushed, rather than during a coding session.
         | 
         | As far as making quick edits, it's very much a step up over the
         | previous/ "raw" edit file function.
         | 
         | I made a patch to phpstan-src a few weeks back, I only needed
         | to update one file, but couldn't get GitHub to load the file
         | through the web editor (very large resource file of function
         | declarations)
         | 
         | Just tested it in this, loaded as fast as vscode or sublime, no
         | issues with scrolling on that 13k line file, Search works like
         | a dream.
        
       | sytse wrote:
       | GitLab had a Web IDE since Jan 2018 and we're considering adding
       | the same . shortcut for it in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
       | org/gitlab/-/issues/340095
        
       | zerop wrote:
       | can one make a full fledged rest API in Java with this?
        
       | teruakohatu wrote:
       | Does anyone know why Atom (now owned by GitHub/MSFT) never felt
       | as native as VS Code, at least back when VS Code was released?
        
       | jedisct1 wrote:
       | This is amazing.
       | 
       | However, the lack of language servers hardly make it a
       | replacement for a desktop install of VSCode.
       | 
       | Writing Rust code without RLS, or Zig code without ZLS is not a
       | great experience.
        
         | rlili wrote:
         | Can't one just install the rust-analyzer extension inside a
         | codespace? It worked for me.
        
           | jedisct1 wrote:
           | That seems to be complicated to setup and Codespaces is only
           | available for organizations and enterprise customers.
        
         | brundolf wrote:
         | This seems like something they could roll out over time,
         | especially given how hard they've been championing LSP
         | elsewhere. I see a convergence over time between this, VSCode
         | remote mode, Codespaces, etc.
        
       | 41209 wrote:
       | Love it.
       | 
       | If you have a pipeline setup you can of course run code on
       | commit.
       | 
       | Hell, this turns an iPad into a limited dev station. For
       | situations where your not at your dev system you can still get
       | some limited work done.
        
       | tyingq wrote:
       | I wonder if this results in some amount of lower quality pull
       | requests since the "barrier to entry" is now pretty low. On the
       | other hand, it might open up more people that can help with
       | documentation bugs and similar.
        
         | mritchie712 wrote:
         | I think the net effect will be positive. Especially on
         | documentation where adding some detail or gotcha is low risk
         | but could possibly save someone else hours.
        
       | lostintangent wrote:
       | If folks are curious about the kind of use cases this enables, I
       | wrote a quick article last week that highlights some of the
       | things that are currently possible (e.g. codebase walkthroughs,
       | web playgrounds, knowledge-base management):
       | http://aka.ms/githubdev-fun
        
       | Shadonototro wrote:
       | > Pressing the dot ( . ) key while browsing any repository on
       | GitHub.
       | 
       | if you are using a QWERTY keyboard layout, yet again, decision
       | made by someone self centered, probably a mac user since github's
       | font looks so bad on linux
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | mmphosis wrote:
       | It doesn't work.
       | 
       |  _Troubleshooting
       | 
       | If you have issues opening the web-based editor, try the
       | following:_
       | 
       |  _Make sure you are signed in to GitHub._ nope
       | 
       |  _Disable any ad blockers._ nope
       | 
       |  _Use a non-incognito window in your browser to open the web-
       | based editor._ nope
        
       | chirau wrote:
       | Maybe I am just dumb, but the terminal is not working for me. How
       | do I run commands in this?
        
         | gedy wrote:
         | > Because there is no associated compute, you won't be able to
         | build and run your code or use the integrated terminal.
        
       | addicted wrote:
       | This is more than a little ironic, because if I remember
       | correctly, Github created the open source Atom editor, which was
       | gaining popularity until VS Code came into the picture and
       | absolutely destroyed it.
        
       | moogly wrote:
       | I've been using this for a while. Very, very, very handy for
       | 
       | - Just exploring some code.
       | 
       | - Quickly pull up as reference code w/ decent navigation without
       | having to checkout locally or navigate forward/back in the source
       | tree in GitHub.
       | 
       | - When reviewing PRs and wanting to check out some surrounding
       | code that is not part of the actual PR.
       | 
       | - If you want to quickly commit something really small and
       | trivial in master/a branch/a PR without having to do the whole
       | stash/checkout/pull/change/commit/push rigmarole (like if you're
       | in the middle of doing something else).
       | 
       | Things that are very annoying:
       | 
       | - Some of the most used VSCode hotkeys are browser hotkeys, like
       | Ctrl+T, Ctrl+P, Ctrl+Shift+P etc. The functions aren't even
       | rebound to anything else, they're just not available via hotkeys.
       | 
       | - Some extensions are not available, especially ones that
       | (partially) may rely on some kind of local binary. I understand
       | that, but that also sometimes rules out extensions that could
       | partially work. Example: none of the Zig extensions work because
       | they reference tooling binaries, so I can't even get syntax
       | highlighting of Zig code. You could argue that's an extension
       | packaging issue, however. That's fair.
       | 
       | - The PR reviewing UI needs a lot of work, because right now it's
       | not as good as the normal GitHub UI, so currently, for larger
       | PRs, I need to have both UIs open.
       | 
       | I hope in the future you can save a gist or something with custom
       | settings/hotkeys/extensions to load. I'm sure they're working on
       | something like that.
       | 
       | Update: Oh, there actually is some form of settings sync. Have to
       | check that out.
        
         | eugene0 wrote:
         | > - When reviewing PRs and wanting to check out some
         | surrounding code that is not part of the actual PR.
         | 
         | It's interesting to see how suitable is the IDE for code review
         | for different people. For me, it's usually pretty much
         | overload, since it's focused on writing, not reading. But
         | GitHub is really doing a great job of eliminating the necessity
         | of cloning the branch for the review.
         | 
         | I'm doing a few experiments in this area on a tool called
         | Viezly (example: https://viezly.com/change_requests/3986). Its
         | focus is on dependency and navigation. So it's a light version
         | of IDE-in-the-cloud for these cases of code review.
        
           | aurbano wrote:
           | That's a really neat way of visualising changed files!
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Godel_unicode wrote:
         | > Some of the most used VSCode hotkeys are browser hotkeys
         | 
         | This kills me with Jupyter. Open bash kernel, make typo,
         | Ctrl+w, sigh as tab disappears. I often open and pin several
         | empty tabs so it only kills the tab, not the whole window.
        
           | bewuethr wrote:
           | I suffered from the same until I discovered Gnome tweaks'
           | "Emacs input" setting, which makes every text field behave
           | like a Bash readline prompt with emacs keybindings!
        
           | brundolf wrote:
           | You can use Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + T to re-open the last closed
           | tab (assuming your actual changes are saved elsewhere; I
           | haven't really used Jupyter)
        
         | lucis wrote:
         | I was showing my friends just yesterday how amazed I was for
         | Command + P working as an app shortcut on github.dev. Did you
         | try this recently?
        
           | moogly wrote:
           | Thanks! It didn't use to work so I haven't tried it in a
           | while (Firefox).
           | 
           | Now I just have to change the other bindings (and relearn).
        
           | rattray wrote:
           | What's this?
        
             | lucis wrote:
             | I've just tested with Safari on MacOS.
             | 
             | 1. Go to any Github repo 2. Press . 3. Wait for the editor
             | to load... 4. Press Ctrl/Command + P 5. It opens VSCode's
             | "Go to File" prompt
        
               | rattray wrote:
               | Nice! Works for me too on Chrome on MacOS.
               | 
               | Too bad cmd+w, ctrl+tab, and ctrl+shift-tab doesn't close
               | an editor tab / switch editor tabs... and if you hover on
               | the close icon, it just tells you to use cmd+w instead of
               | something else.
        
               | losvedir wrote:
               | Is this basically the same as hitting just plain "t" on a
               | github.com repo? (Fuzzy file listing/search).
        
         | justinsaccount wrote:
         | > - Some of the most used VSCode hotkeys are browser hotkeys,
         | like Ctrl+T, Ctrl+P, Ctrl+Shift+P etc. The functions aren't
         | even rebound to anything else, they're just not available via
         | hotkeys.
         | 
         | On chrome(os) at least if you move the editor to it's own
         | fullscreen window all keys are passed to the editor.
         | 
         | There's probably a way to make this work without requiring the
         | window to be fullscreen.
        
           | wffurr wrote:
           | Click the "add to shelf" or "create shortcut" option in the
           | Chrome menu, and tick the box for "open as window".
           | 
           | https://www.cnet.com/how-to/this-setting-makes-chrome-os-
           | fee...
        
         | cookiengineer wrote:
         | > - Some of the most used VSCode hotkeys are browser hotkeys,
         | like Ctrl+T, Ctrl+P, Ctrl+Shift+P etc. The functions aren't
         | even rebound to anything else, they're just not available via
         | hotkeys.
         | 
         | You can also use "chromium --app $url" and you'll have these
         | key bindings available. If you want to use github isolated from
         | your browser history, you can use it like so:
         | 
         | [$] chromium --user-data-dir=$HOME/github_or_whatever
         | --app="https://github.com/orga/repo" --new-window;
         | 
         | edit: If you use MacOS or Windows, my browser wrapper script
         | from another project might give you some hints on how to use
         | Safari or Edge this way [1].
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/tholian-
         | network/stealth/blob/X0/browser/b...
        
         | stophecom wrote:
         | > If you want to quickly commit something really small and
         | trivial in master/a branch/a PR without having to do the whole
         | stash/checkout/pull/change/commit/push rigmarole (like if
         | you're in the middle of doing something else).
         | 
         | Agree, except code formatting (e.g. w/ Prettier) is missing -
         | which would make it extremely helpful to do small PRs.
        
       | lilyball wrote:
       | GitHub sure is focused on getting people to edit projects from
       | the web, but they continue to let the actual code review part
       | languish. It's barely usable for any kind of serious review, and
       | it barely even _loads_ for large PRs.
        
       | k__ wrote:
       | I'm in the beta for a few months now and use it on a daily basis.
       | 
       | It's pretty nice to have an extra tier between "local
       | clone/checkout" and "commit to remote repository".
       | 
       | I can code on my three different machines with one "remote
       | checkout" and commit when I'm finished.
       | 
       | Before, I would have to pull/push every time I switched the
       | machine.
       | 
       | I used Cloud9 before, but VSCode simply has the better eco-
       | system.
       | 
       | The only thing that sucks is (obviously) offline work. It would
       | be cool if I could do more locally, especially when I'm in a
       | train.
        
       | jrm4 wrote:
       | Convenient, but also, be wary to the extent that this might be
       | steps toward the "Microsoft controls all the code" ecosystem.
        
       | zimbatm wrote:
       | Brave users out there, something in the security model is
       | preventing from loading the Service Worker. I tried to relax the
       | permissions on the domains but it's still being blocked somehow:
       | 
       | > Error loading webview: Error: Could not register service
       | workers: NotSupportedError: Failed to register a ServiceWorker
       | for scope ('https://a47e99b4-9517-4e50-87ca-95e06da14aed.vscode-
       | webview....') with script
       | ('https://a47e99b4-9517-4e50-87ca-95e06da14aed.vscode-
       | webview....'): The user denied permission to use Service Worker..
        
       | account_created wrote:
       | I was trying to access [vscode](https://vscode.dev), but couldn't
       | login using my `live.in` email address. It says that "'live.com'
       | does not exist in tenant 'Microsoft'", LOL
        
         | ItalyPaleAle wrote:
         | vscode.dev is not yet publicly available. You can use
         | github.dev for now
        
       | robbiemitchell wrote:
       | The onboarding experience was odd.
       | 
       | I pressed "next section" thinking it would move me down to the
       | next item in the menu, but it skipped me to another page. Then I
       | tried to press some kind of "back" button and it ended the
       | onboarding completely. And there doesn't seem to be a way to get
       | it back again.
        
       | zz865 wrote:
       | Its scary we're heading towards a situation where everything is
       | done in a browser. Maybe Chromeos really is the future.
        
         | divan wrote:
         | If you think about it, browser is just an OS for the apps that
         | have crappiest stack (typesetting engine from 80s and, well,
         | javascript), weird window manager (full-window tabs), sandbox
         | for everything (including TCP/UDP calls) and no apps
         | distribution process whatsoever - you download app each time
         | you want to use it.
         | 
         | Why people are excited about this OS, I don't know :)
        
           | stabbles wrote:
           | The OS is free, easy to install and runs on mobile too...
        
           | hortense wrote:
           | Some people are excited because there's no gatekeeper taking
           | 100 USD every year for the privilege of distributing apps on
           | it. Also, it's quite simple to start developing for it.
           | 
           | For complex software (e.g. video games) on the other hand the
           | web is a real piece of crap: performance suck, no UDP, a
           | certain browser is purposely a ton of useful APIs (or is
           | straight up buggy).
        
           | yann2 wrote:
           | Start disecting how the brain works and its very similar one
           | stack of garbage hacks on top of another constantly
           | accumulating over time.
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | I'd like something more dependable and user-friendly than
             | my brain though.
        
           | duped wrote:
           | All of these things are secondary to a standard UI and
           | distribution for all platforms.
        
           | maple3142 wrote:
           | > sandbox for everything
           | 
           | IMO, This is the best thing about browser as an OS. You can
           | run untrusted apps and know that it couldn't steal your ssh
           | keys or other things without your consent, similar to iOS and
           | Android.
        
             | zz865 wrote:
             | Yes its the best thing about a browser when your laptop has
             | valuable stuff on it.
             | 
             | When all your data is on a server its like you dont need a
             | sandbox any more. :)
        
               | aloer wrote:
               | There are more benefits with the browser sandbox than
               | just plain old file access. Web apps can't just read the
               | clipboard or enter scripts/commands or take screenshots
               | or activate webcam and microphone
               | 
               | For all practical purposes, file system sandbox features
               | might actually be the first to become meaningless again
               | when more and more data is stored in offline browser
               | caches
               | 
               | And application delivery in enterprise environments is
               | also much more lightweight compared to VDI solutions like
               | Citrix so there's another benefit in terms of sandbox and
               | isolation
        
         | mark_l_watson wrote:
         | At Google in 2013, many developers just used Chromebook's. I am
         | starting a new job in a few weeks and I expect quite a lot of
         | my work will be done in AWS SageMaker.
         | 
         | I am fairly comfortable having my laptop being a conduit to
         | better resources in the cloud. There are also strong security
         | advantages of not having sensitive data on laptops.
        
         | amitport wrote:
         | Why is it scary?
        
           | zz865 wrote:
           | Scary was probably not what I meant, more like paradigm
           | shifting change into something unrecognizable from my
           | experience.
        
           | amitport wrote:
           | I just want to add that running in the browser does not mean
           | running in the cloud or web. I actually once worked on
           | enterprise software that used a browser as GUI. That's not at
           | all bad. Of course there is always room for improvement.
        
             | cxr wrote:
             | By a reasonable guess your app was distributed as a binary
             | that spun up a local web server and automatically pointed
             | the user's browser to it. That's a perfectly fine approach
             | for some use cases, but for many others, even the server
             | binary isn't needed.
             | 
             | An extremely underappreciated approach for development and
             | distribution is targeting the browser as a sandbox for
             | fully local applications (embodied in static files--or
             | better: as a single file). I see lots of people making apps
             | and throwing them up on GitHub Pages, but rarely do the
             | developers package them up into a form that you can
             | download from the Releases tab from the associated repo and
             | then double click to run. At best, they'll point at the
             | repo with instructions in the README about running npm or
             | yarn.
             | 
             | (Then again, if their build processes would also target the
             | browser's JS engine and standard browser APIs instead of
             | NodeJS and its proprietary ones, then the entire exercise
             | of setting up an NPM-based development environment need not
             | exist, either. Oddly enough, people who think of themselves
             | as JS developers and spend their days writing web apps seem
             | to either really dislike the thought of actually using the
             | browser, or they're so afflicted with tunnel vision that
             | they've missed the obviousness of using the browser runtime
             | in this way.)
        
           | jhoechtl wrote:
           | All your Data are belong to us?
        
           | cube00 wrote:
           | It's the end of being able purchase any kind of perpetual
           | license to your software. It'll all be on the web and it will
           | be paid per month. When that meets a company with an
           | aggressive sunset policy or if they have an outage it won't
           | be a good time.
        
             | Vespasian wrote:
             | It probably requires updating user protection laws to deal
             | with new business models and enforce interoperability.
             | 
             | We are still in the Wild West Phase of SAAS.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | We already have a draft of them from timesharing days.
        
             | dgb23 wrote:
             | Seems unlikely. Even if that is a trend right now, if there
             | is a need for other paradigms, then there will be people
             | making and using them.
        
             | CodeGlitch wrote:
             | But with opensource software I can run it on any server I
             | want (AWS, Azure, my own). I'm still in control.
             | 
             | I do this for all sorts of applications.
        
             | dmingod666 wrote:
             | If someone says "The trend towards smaller cars suggests
             | trucks and SUVs will cease to exist.."
             | 
             | Not going to happen..
        
             | tclancy wrote:
             | One could also see it as an option that makes contributing
             | to open source so much easier for small edits. There are
             | plenty of times when I am working that I would make a small
             | change or refactoring to a project, but the idea of
             | cloning, setting up an environment, figuring out how they
             | run tests, etc. makes for too much of a barrier to entry.
        
           | criddell wrote:
           | Ellen Ullman quotes Whitfield Diffie in her book _Life in
           | Code_ and I think he's spot on:
           | 
           | > We were slaves to the mainframe! he said. Dumb terminals!
           | That's all we had. We were powerless under the big machine's
           | unyielding central control. Then we escaped to the personal
           | computer, autonomous, powerful. Then networks. The PC was
           | soon rendered to be nothing but a "thin client," just a
           | browser with very little software residing on our personal
           | machines, the code being on network servers, which are under
           | the control of administrators. Now to the web, nothing but a
           | thin, thin browser for us. All the intelligence out there, on
           | the net, our machines having become dumb terminals again.
        
           | mschuster91 wrote:
           | With a piece of software I physically own and that has an
           | offline activation mode ( _tips hat to Jetbrains_ ), I can be
           | reasonably certain that I can keep using it for as long as I
           | can maintain some kind of virtual machine for the host OS. I
           | will not be affected in my usage of the software by any
           | decision the software maker decides to do in the future -
           | think UI overhauls, deprecation of features -, the balance of
           | my bank account or the software maker goes bankrupt or bought
           | out.
           | 
           | If I am skilled enough, I can mod the piece of software to do
           | whatever I want (this especially applies to games), or can
           | swap out pieces with other pieces (e.g. replace the built-in
           | compiler of an IDE with a different one).
           | 
           | A pure SaaS environment? I'm completely at the mercy of the
           | operator now. I am locked in into whatever decision the
           | operator makes, I depend on them keeping their service
           | available 24/7 (because when they go down, I can't work and
           | make money), I depend on them not getting bought out by a
           | competitor that then decides to close up shop (either to get
           | rid of competition, acqui-hire or the specific SaaS service
           | is unprofitable), I'll have to pay whatever price the
           | operator wants (which is particularly insidious given the SV
           | model of price dumping, monopoly formation and subsequent
           | extortion), and in most if not all cases I have no way of
           | modification (userstyles/userscripts just don't work in
           | compiled JS/CSS apps any more without _a lot_ of work). And
           | to top it off, for many SaaS solutions I have to pay money to
           | keep using it under a contract, which is an obligation on my
           | future budget.
        
         | SimeVidas wrote:
         | Not "everything is done in a browser" but "everything is done
         | in applications running in a browser engine"
        
         | xtat wrote:
         | Way scarier is a world of native code and appstores
        
         | headmelted wrote:
         | It's fantastic. Cloud 9 IDE has been surprisingly good at this
         | point for many years but never really got much attention after
         | the Amazon purchase.
         | 
         | Obviously it's no Visual Studio Code (not least because of the
         | ecosystem of plugins), so it's great to see things coming
         | along.
        
         | stabbles wrote:
         | I used to think this was pushed by some of the large tech
         | companies that do not have a popular OS and are forced to turn
         | the browser effectively into an OS. But both Github and VS code
         | are owned by Microsoft now.
        
           | Vespasian wrote:
           | Users in general (with exceptions) do not care about how and
           | where their software runs and data is stored.
           | 
           | For many people internet connectivity and local computation
           | power (within the browser) is now good enough to skip
           | installations and updates all together.
           | 
           | It makes perfect sense for them to do this and in the end
           | they are not giving up control if they still own the OS.
           | 
           | Microsoft can always the decide that "untrusted" websites
           | (which, for example, are not "certified" by them) get blocked
           | from using certain features.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | They are pushing Azure Cloud OS, Microsoft's timesharing
           | platform. :)
        
           | smackeyacky wrote:
           | It smells to me like Microsoft have realised Windows is
           | heading the way of VMS and they need an exit strategy. Its no
           | coincidence windows 11 pro has a built in wayland compositor
           | to go with WSL2.
        
       | maxwellito wrote:
       | It's surprisingly good! Same experience as using VSCode on my
       | computer. I'll definitely start using it for quick edits, then
       | probably end using it for normal development.
       | 
       | Curious to see how the developing experience will evolve in the
       | next few years.
        
       | bullen wrote:
       | I just get "The Web Worker Extension Host did not start in 60s,
       | that might be a problem."
       | 
       | And the project never loads.
       | 
       | Edit1: That said I also started development on my own web IDE:
       | http://edit.rupy.se
       | 
       | Edit2: This other URL works: https://github1s.com/tinspin/rupy
        
         | interactivecode wrote:
         | Where can I read more about your web ide?
        
       | gclawes wrote:
       | So if VS Code can run as a web-based editor like this, what's the
       | major difference between VS Code and Eclipse Theia (derived from
       | VSCode)?
        
       | headmelted wrote:
       | It looks like this is actually just the editor from Visual Studio
       | Online unless I've missed something.
       | 
       | It's great, but if it were really Visual Studio Code that would
       | be awesome and I'd be pleasantly surprised.
       | 
       | (The difference being that if it's just the editor it misses out
       | on all the compiler/analysis integrations. If Github were
       | providing Linux containers in the cloud for working on projects -
       | essentially the SSH feature from Visual Studio Code - it would be
       | absolutely brilliant.)
        
         | csnweb wrote:
         | I think what you might want is GitHub Codespaces?:
         | https://github.com/features/codespaces. Was on HN recently too.
        
           | headmelted wrote:
           | This is literally _exactly_ what I would want, thanks!
        
           | messe wrote:
           | Hmm. $0.18 per hour for 4GB of RAM is a rather steep. A
           | c6g.large on AWS would run you less than a half of that, for
           | the same number of CPUs and memory. A quarter if you're happy
           | to use spot instances. Might be neat to have an OSS tool that
           | spins up an EC2 (or Azure or GCP) instance running Code-
           | Server[1] (VS Code running natively on the server, but
           | presenting the UI in the browser), with a given git repo and
           | credentials.
           | 
           | Admittedly, the storage costs would be higher.
           | 
           | [1]: https://github.com/cdr/code-server
        
             | westurner wrote:
             | The ml-workspace docker image includes Git, Jupyter, VS
             | Code, SSH, and "many popular data science libraries &
             | tools" https://github.com/ml-tooling/ml-workspace
             | docker run -p 8080:8080 -v "${PWD}:/workspace"
             | mltooling/ml-workspace
             | 
             | Cocalc-docker also includes Git, Jupyter, SSH, a
             | collaborative LaTeX editor, a time slider, but no code-
             | server or VScode out of the box:
             | https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc-docker
             | docker run --name=cocalc -d -v ~/cocalc:/projects -p
             | 443:443 sagemathinc/cocalc
        
         | cube00 wrote:
         | _> Because there is no associated compute, you won't be able to
         | build and run your code or use the integrated terminal. Only a
         | subset of extensions that can run in the web will appear in the
         | Extensions panel and can be installed. Likewise, support for
         | certain programming languages may be more limited in the web._
        
           | headmelted wrote:
           | That's a shame, but at the same time a big step forward.
           | 
           | Azure has had this for a few years now (unless there's
           | upgrades in the Github version I'm not aware of) and it's
           | been really useful for quick edits - will be good to see it
           | develop now that it's sure to pick up much more use through
           | GH.
        
       | adevx wrote:
       | If you don't want to tie in with GitHub, there is also a vscode
       | browser version called "code server"
       | 
       | https://github.com/cdr/code-server
       | 
       | I've been using it for the last couple of weeks on a development
       | VPS and really love it. I'm considering moving my dev environment
       | over to the server and just open a browser to do all the work.
        
         | dschuessler wrote:
         | Is there any upside compared to using the SSH Remote extension?
         | https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh
         | 
         | It automatically sets up the server for me on any machine I can
         | SSH into and I can use real VSCode instead of the browser
         | version.
        
           | lights0123 wrote:
           | That is proprietary, code-server is completely Free
        
           | adevx wrote:
           | Benefits of code-server is that it requires zero tooling on
           | the client except a browser. I can use e.g. someone's iPad to
           | quickly do some edits vs requiring my laptop with SSH keys.
           | Other than that, using native vscode is a bit faster and has
           | all keyboard shortcuts working. I use both vscode remote with
           | SSH and "code server" behind NGINX.
        
       | greatgib wrote:
       | Remember the typical Microsoft:
       | 
       | "embrace, extend, extinguish" ...
        
         | user-the-name wrote:
         | What exactly is it you are saying they are embracing, extending
         | or extinguishing here?
        
           | Zababa wrote:
           | Open source development, starting with Javascript/Typescript.
           | Microsoft own Typescript, VSCode, Github, Azure and NPM. It's
           | not hard to imagine in the future an online dev environment
           | that works with all of these technologies together. But this
           | environment won't have an open source counterpart.
           | 
           | Embrace: Buy Github, NPM, develop VScode, Typescript, Azure.
           | 
           | Extend & extinguish: make all of them work together really
           | well in a way that can't be reproduce by the open soure
           | community.
           | 
           | I think it's a bit early to say that they are embracing and
           | extinguishing at this point, but I wasn't here last time and
           | may be biaised because I find these tools incredibly
           | convenient. In a way, Microsoft is leveraging their unique
           | advantage over other cloud vendors, which is their proximity
           | with developers.
        
             | user-the-name wrote:
             | What is the "extinguish" part?
        
               | Zababa wrote:
               | According to Wikipedia:
               | 
               | "Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard
               | because of their dominant market share, they marginalize
               | competitors that do not or cannot support the new
               | extensions."
               | 
               | So if your text editor doesn't support integration with
               | Github and a cloud vendor, or if your repositories don't
               | support integration with an online text editor and a
               | cloud vendor, or if your cloud vendor doesn't support
               | integration with Github and an online text editor, this
               | will affect your market share. I think the end goal is
               | around "developer mindshare" (which, I admit, is a really
               | vague concept), especially in web applications. By
               | assembling all that they have, they can create an
               | experience no one else can, all while leveraging open
               | source tools.
               | 
               | You could also imagine an integration with education
               | (Github student pack, Azure credits, etc). At this point,
               | they could dominate the web app market because no one
               | else can offer such a deep integration across the stack.
               | 
               | I think one of the differences with the "old" EEE would
               | be that instead of intentionally crippling certain
               | features, they are instead focusing on giving the best-
               | in-class experience. If you consider that it's just
               | regular competition and not EEE because of that, that's
               | totally fair. Still, I think that we should still be wary
               | of domination. Competition is what's pushing Microsoft to
               | develop all those wonderful tools, and I fear that with
               | domination they might become complacent and abuse their
               | position.
        
               | cxr wrote:
               | The GitHub folks were already on a roll with this before
               | Microsoft came along. How many people don't understand
               | the difference between Git and GitHub, don't realize that
               | saying "can you <interact with me somehow> on GitHub?"
               | makes the same presumptions as "can you <interact with me
               | somehow> on Facebook?", don't give two shits about how
               | messy their commit messages are formatted, don't realize
               | that Git doesn't actually have PRs, don't realize that
               | the closest analog that it does have is intended for the
               | convenience of a core team of frequent collaborators
               | pulling from one another (N-to-N instead of the star
               | topology that dominates on GitHub--and not for drive-by
               | contributors), and wouldn't know what to do with a patch
               | if you gave it to them, or if they do, wouldn't accept
               | one if you tried.
        
               | Zababa wrote:
               | That is a very good point. I had the chance to start my
               | "Git adventure" with Mercurial on some in house software
               | at my university. They then switched to Git with Gitlab.
               | And now I use Git with Github. It helped me to realize
               | which piece does what. But if you start with popular
               | tutorials, everything is Github. Github even released a
               | CLI wrapper around Git that integrates Github-specific
               | concepts.
        
           | dmm wrote:
           | vscode is open source but many of the most interesting
           | features are proprietary, making the use of anything but the
           | official build impossible for many use cases.
           | 
           | A few weeks ago I investigated using an embedded version of
           | vscode to create containerized dev environments for an
           | internal developer platform we're working on. The hope was to
           | allow devs to write and debug code from inside a k8s
           | container by using vscode inside their browser. Very similar
           | to the newly announced codespaces feature.
           | 
           | Unfortunately, there were several factors that made this
           | impractical. The extension marketplace can only be used with
           | the official build. There are at least two alternatives but
           | both were missing extensions that our devs used. Also, the c#
           | debugger is proprietary and only works with official vscode
           | build.
           | 
           | From that experience I believe that while the core editor
           | features of vscode are open source, "Visual Studio Code" the
           | tool that people actually use is defacto proprietary and
           | entirely controlled by Microsoft.
        
             | user-the-name wrote:
             | None of which has anything to do with "embrace, extend,
             | extinguish". That just means they are not wanting to fully
             | commit to open sourcing their own editor.
        
         | junon wrote:
         | For those unaware:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
         | 
         | > "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE) . . . is a phrase
         | that the U.S. Department of Justice found that was used
         | internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering
         | product categories involving widely used standards, extending
         | those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using
         | those differences in order to strongly disadvantage its
         | competitors.
         | 
         | This is a completely valid reason to be concerned with these
         | sorts of things now that GitHub is owned and operated by
         | Microsoft. They continue these practices today, and GitHub is
         | no exception.
        
           | teekert wrote:
           | You get downvoted but I also have that little voice in my
           | head. I keep thinking about hitting a point of no return with
           | my dependency on Microsoft. But I'm not there yet, I could
           | untangle fairly quickly, fairly painlessly. Moreover, many of
           | MS' recent stuff is FOSS, they can change it, but we can fork
           | it. And competitors like GitLab are still alive and kicking,
           | not suffering by the looks of it.
           | 
           | But the little voice indeed remains.
        
             | junon wrote:
             | Yeah the downvotes don't surprise me, but their strategy
             | has existed historically - proven, as it were - and thus I
             | have to assume they still employ these tactics. At least
             | from the outside, it sure seems so.
        
               | teekert wrote:
               | Tbh I think they have bettered themselves. I'm not so
               | afraid of it. Companies can change, Satya is an admirable
               | man, he always comes across as wise. Well, I guess the
               | same could be said of Ballmer, some videos being a BIG
               | exception of course. But it doesn't hurt to keep an eye
               | on them ;)
        
         | greatgib wrote:
         | Looks like there are some Microsoft fan boys here...
         | 
         | For the others, that does not know the concept that was applied
         | by them numerous times, it's easy:
         | 
         | - embrace: they buy GitHub, play nice, be part of the
         | community, we will change nothing, commit to open source spirit
         | 
         | - extend [current step]: oh, we are just adding nice features,
         | now you will use our visual studio, but don't worry, it's for
         | free, it just improve your experience.
         | 
         | - extinguish [next step, my guess]:
         | 
         | * "sadly, VS works better in edge and does not support minor
         | browsers like Firefox",
         | 
         | * there are these cool new synchronization features/real time
         | collaboration that requires Visual Studio on your computer.
         | 
         | * Sorry, you need an official VS build to use the features
         | because security/authentication/...
         | 
         | * Here are the corporate workspace accounts that allows to
         | limit code edition in the cloud, for security. And so, for
         | security also, you can only use it from edge on windows X with
         | TPM.
         | 
         | Based on previous MS experiences, the possibility are endless!
         | 
         | I would kindly remind that the version of VisualStudioCode that
         | almost everyone use is just a freeware but it can't be built as
         | is from ope source code.
         | 
         | Also, not long so long ago they were willing to switch everyone
         | GitHub accounts with Microsoft accounts...
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Except everyone is on the game to bring back timesharing as
         | main computing model, Microsoft isn't alone.
         | 
         | Outside games, even most native mobile apps don't work without
         | their timesharing infrastructure.
        
       | PaulWaldman wrote:
       | Is this Codespaces without the ability to build and debug?
        
         | traspler wrote:
         | Yes, pretty much. Also with some limits on the available
         | extensions as everything runs in your browser.
        
           | maxioatic wrote:
           | For example, the Rust or Go extension.
        
       | qwerty456127 wrote:
       | Finally. I've been waiting for this since 2009 when the Bespin
       | project emerged. But now I'm afraid they will occasionally
       | deprecate the offline VSCode or make it a paid option.
        
       | SuboptimalEng wrote:
       | I recently discovered this feature and started using it to
       | explore repositories and it's saved me a lot of time. My use-case
       | is pretty simple but you can definitely do a lot more with this.
       | For those that prefer a visual example you can watch my 2 minute
       | YouTube video[0].
       | 
       | Pros:
       | 
       | - No need to clone code base to just explore it (cmd + p to
       | search files)
       | 
       | - A lot of VS code extensions are available to use out of the
       | box: Vim, themes, syntax highlighters
       | 
       | - You can import your VS code's custom settings.json +
       | keybindings.json
       | 
       | Cons:
       | 
       | - Not all keybindings work since they conflict with the browser
       | (cmd + shift + f to search all files sometimes bugs out and makes
       | browser full screen)
       | 
       | - Not all extensions are currently available
       | 
       | - The terminal doesn't work
       | 
       | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTTGCgQQhgw
        
       | azalemeth wrote:
       | Am I alone in _not_ jumping on the Visual Studio [Code]
       | bandwagon? Other online editors have had  "vim modes" for _ages_
       | (e.g. Overleaf) and frankly I 'm unlikely to write a chonking
       | great script or project in a browser on Github -- a minor
       | modification is much more likely. VS Code's codebase is _huge_.
       | Will Github allow people to use other $EDITORs?
       | 
       | (Yes, I'm aware this makes me sound like an old man!)
        
         | raxxorrax wrote:
         | VSCode is/was a neat editor, but I fear it is slowly morphing
         | to become an overloaded mess.
         | 
         | It was so sleek and lightweight at first it was really a
         | pleasure to use. But performance and bugs seem to increase,
         | even if you don't use many or any plugins at all.
        
           | tehbeard wrote:
           | I'm curious to know what sort of dev work you do with vscode,
           | it still feels rather snappy to me with ~40 extensions, but
           | perhaps using it for other languages is more of a problem?
        
             | raxxorrax wrote:
             | I am an embedded dev that mostly writes C/ASM, but also
             | JS/HTML for visualization, where I use VSCode mostly.
             | 
             | It still has decent performance and I will continue using
             | it. I think I have my linters correctly configured so there
             | isn't any huge background scanning of files. But I have the
             | impression the early versions were faster.
        
             | krono wrote:
             | > ~40 extensions
             | 
             | Devs with this many extensions are an OpSec/data governance
             | nightmare!
             | 
             | VSCode desperately needs some sort of access
             | policy/permission system for their extensions, and make it
             | more obvious when an extension phones home code or other
             | data its user doesn't directly provide it with.
             | 
             | Copilot, for example, straight up sends and uses your code
             | - not just the modifications you've made to the laundered
             | code it provides you with, but any or all of it [1].
             | 
             | 1 https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/telemetry-terms
        
         | jchw wrote:
         | For me the advantage of VSCode is in its approach and how it
         | has differed from other products:
         | 
         | - VSCode Remoting is really useful. It doesn't suffer as much
         | from latency as SSH or display forwarding, and lets you use
         | some local configuration when remoting. Neovim will soon have a
         | feature like this.
         | 
         | - Language servers for code intelligence has greatly improved
         | editor support for languages. Up until the introduction and
         | adoption of LSP, which was practically an invention of VSCode,
         | language support was significantly more hit-or-miss with most
         | editors. Basically only IntelliJ IDEA could do similar code
         | intelligence across many languages. Because of LSP though, more
         | editors and more languages can participate in inline
         | documentation, go to symbol, errors as you type, debugging,
         | etc. for example, many people now use language servers with
         | Vim, and you can see useful integrations for languages like
         | Terraform/Hashicorp HCL.
         | 
         | - The extensions ecosystem: it isn't necessarily the greatest
         | ever, but it is very solid.
         | 
         | - Compared to many IDEs, it remains lightweight and fast to
         | boot. Though I'm not complaining, (regular) Visual Studio and
         | IntelliJ are too useful to ignore in some cases.
         | 
         | - Unification: because it's so versatile, across OSes, across
         | runtimes, over remoting, over Code Spaces, you can buy into the
         | ecosystem in your projects. You can tell Code Spaces what
         | extensions to install and what commands to run, to try to build
         | a nice environment. You can tell desktop VS Code what
         | extensions are recommended, add workspace configuration to help
         | improve the workflow. Users still can use other editors, and
         | you can still include editor information for those editors too.
         | But, for someone who just wants a good option to edit a
         | specific project, pushing them towards VS Code is a really safe
         | bet.
         | 
         | To be clear it has some issues too:
         | 
         | - There is no equally useable OSS version, as the Microsoft
         | distribution has become more dependent on services and blobs.
         | 
         | - It's not as quick and responsive as something like Sublime
         | Text or vim.
         | 
         | ... but honestly, I think it's just great. If I was a new
         | programmer again and I could jump right into projects and
         | immediately begin working on them without having to figure out
         | the rigmarole of version control, tool chains, build system and
         | editor config, that would be amazing. For that reason I think
         | Code Spaces and VSCode are net goods, though I think we ought
         | not become too dependent on the specific solution. VSCode is
         | never going to be the perfect editor for any specific use, but
         | I believe overall it is usually a great editor.
        
           | _fat_santa wrote:
           | > There is no equally useable OSS version, as the Microsoft
           | distribution has become more dependent on services and blobs
           | 
           | Check out VSCodium, similar to Chrome/Chromium, it's just
           | VSCode minus all the related Microsoft stuff.
        
             | siproprio wrote:
             | Yeah, but the vscode team is actively trying to break
             | vscodium.
        
               | easton wrote:
               | Can you point to how? Pretty much all of the
               | functionality Microsoft has made that is proprietary
               | they've packaged inside extensions. The app itself works
               | fine without those extensions.
        
               | siproprio wrote:
               | https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/issues/746
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | nerdponx wrote:
           | I get worried that VS Code is too popular, and that some
           | higher ups might be tempted to go for an EEE play.
           | 
           | The flipside is that MS pouring money into VS Code has
           | tremendously benefited the entire code editor ecosystem,
           | including (especially) FOSS editors that can reuse their
           | language servers.
        
             | hajile wrote:
             | Last I checked, most of the MS-owned language servers used
             | proprietary licenses.
             | 
             | An example is the Python language server
             | 
             | https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-release
             | 
             | They base it 90% on the open-source pyright library. Then
             | the lock down all their own enhancements.
             | 
             | https://github.com/microsoft/pyright
             | 
             | This is why MIT isn't always the correct choice. GPL
             | wouldn't hurt devs at all and would protect from this kind
             | of garbage from MS.
        
               | nerdponx wrote:
               | In this case both Pylance and Pyright are developed by
               | Microsoft.
               | 
               | I suspect that open-sourcing in anything at all is
               | essentially a long-term PR/marketing/recruiting
               | investment, as well as as positioning Microsoft as the
               | keepers and main developers of what has become an
               | important standard.
               | 
               | That said, by "reuse" I mean that end-users are free to
               | install the non-free binaries extracted from VS code,
               | which interoperate with any text editor that implement a
               | language client. They are all on NPM.
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | > This is why MIT isn't always the correct choice. GPL
               | wouldn't hurt devs at all and would protect from this
               | kind of garbage from MS.
               | 
               | But would it protect against Pylance existing, or would
               | it just be more expensive to develop but still
               | proprietary (and possibly not free-as-in-beer), or would
               | it be Free?
               | 
               | There's only one of those three where devs (as opposed to
               | Free Software ideologues) win, and one where both lose.
               | 
               | (And really, it would do _none_ of those, since pyright
               | is also owned by MS, so they could reuse it on any terms
               | even if the owner [them] offered it to others only under
               | GPL terms. All GPL would do is prevent someone else from
               | competing with Pylance by taking pyright and building
               | similar functionality on top, possibly with a still-Free
               | license.)
        
               | hajile wrote:
               | If pyright were GPL'd then MS would own their own pieces,
               | but the contributions would be owned by others and that
               | would prevent the relicensing you're talking aobut.
               | 
               | MS _could_ pay a dev team to write everything themselves,
               | but it 's a matter of cost. Given the choice between
               | paying for a ground-up development for a tiny gain or
               | using the open project, inertia would push toward the
               | open project.
               | 
               | Finally, there's the question of trust.
               | 
               | Why does MS feel the need to lock these things down?
               | 
               | It's obvious now that "Open" was a hook. It killed off
               | all the competitors like Atom or Brackets and even mostly
               | killed off other editors like Sublime. The only question
               | now is the final goal of their lock-in. The only real
               | observation is that all of "the new MS that loves devs"
               | was just more of the classic Microsoft we've known for
               | decades.
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | > If pyright were GPL'd then MS would own their own
               | pieces, but the contributions would be owned by others
               | 
               | So in your hypothetical, Microsoft not only _uses_ the
               | GPL instead of MIT outbound, but _accepts contributions_
               | under the GPL instead of the CLA it uses for most MS open
               | source project contributions, including pyright, inbound,
               | etc.?
        
               | hajile wrote:
               | Yes.
               | 
               | If they asked for people to sign over copyright for all
               | contributions, they simply wouldn't get many takers
               | because it would be transparent that the only reason to
               | ask would be to close the source later.
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | > If they asked for people to sign over copyright for all
               | contributions, they simply wouldn't get many takers
               | because it would be transparent that the only reason to
               | ask would be to close the source later.
               | 
               | How is that any less true when the outbound license is
               | MIT, and, therefore, how is the fact that they get
               | contributions with the CLA _now_ not a firm disproof of
               | that claim?
        
               | dllthomas wrote:
               | Moreover, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
        
               | Godel_unicode wrote:
               | I wish this point was brought up more often. Like in the
               | TiVo case when everyone lost their minds about ideology,
               | meanwhile millions of people got to watch what they
               | wanted on their schedule and with no ads.
               | 
               | This attitude of MIT being bad because it gives people
               | freedom to do Bad Things(tm) really makes me question
               | what open source is actually about (yes I know that it's
               | complicated and means many things, that's not what I'm
               | talking about here). It seems to me that some proponents
               | of it really believe in it so they can tell other people
               | what to do.
        
               | nerdponx wrote:
               | > It seems to me that some proponents of it really
               | believe in it so they can tell other people what to do.
               | 
               | "Some", perhaps. But this is a really disingenuous way to
               | characterize open source.
        
               | Godel_unicode wrote:
               | "yes I know that it's complicated and means many things,
               | that's not what I'm talking about here"
        
         | jarek83 wrote:
         | I'm on RubyMine with vim navigation. I find extremely helpful
         | in everyday work and it's not only perceived feeling - I pair
         | program sometimes with people that use VS Code and they tend to
         | be much slower in finding things just because of the clunkiness
         | of the VSC's UI.
        
         | barrenko wrote:
         | VS Code is all fine an dandy but -
         | 
         | 1) When you alt-tab you lose dialog tooltip, I can't handle
         | this, it should be a number one priority to fix this 2) A lot
         | of languages just look plain ugly in VS Code, not so in Emacs
         | for example, Vim w/e
        
         | rattray wrote:
         | > Will Github allow people to use other $EDITORs?
         | 
         | Yes, just clone? Most people who want other editors probably
         | don't want browser-based ones.
         | 
         | I'm not sure if the VSCodeVim or VSCodeNeovim extensions work
         | on the online version yet, but I'm sure some VSCode/GitHub
         | engineers are on the case if not.
         | 
         | EDIT: VSCodeVim (the main "Vim" extension) does "work" on
         | github.dev but the escape key doesn't, so as soon as you press
         | "i" you're stuck in insert mode forever.
         | https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/issues/7005
        
           | philipswood wrote:
           | This seems like it should not be very difficult to do for
           | yourself if motivated.
           | 
           | xterm.js [1] is pretty good.
           | 
           | Something like gotty [2] and a engine for getting a container
           | with a git checkout started should be relatively straight
           | forward.
           | 
           | [1]:https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/
           | 
           | [2]:https://github.com/yudai/gotty
        
             | reificator wrote:
             | I'm waiting for version 8 of xterm.js where they introduce
             | a minimal version that uses less resources. Then we'll find
             | out who's really behind the project...
             | 
             | xterm-min-8.js
        
               | Tyriar wrote:
               | As the maintainer of xterm.js I have no idea what you're
               | suggesting? FWIW we just shipped xterm-headless which is
               | literally a minimal version that uses less resources.
        
               | reificator wrote:
               | Sorry bad joke about how the name "xterm" sounds like the
               | beginning of the word "exterminate", implying it was made
               | by Daleks from Doctor Who.
               | 
               | I forgot HN is not the place for humor, and I did not
               | intend to cast any actual aspersions toward anyone
               | maintaining cool projects.
        
         | yepthatsreality wrote:
         | I'm with you. I see no real benefit to VS Code other than not
         | understanding how your code editor works, if not a bit
         | restrictive. SublimeText has filled the gaps above and I
         | haven't ever found a reason to leave it.
        
         | eyelidlessness wrote:
         | Seems like you could use a browser extension that intercepts
         | the same key event to load the editor of your choice?
        
         | bennyp101 wrote:
         | Depends what I'm doing, but most day stuff is in a JetBrains
         | product, or vscode , or sublimetext - in that order.
         | 
         | But I did go from notepad, to eclipse, to ST, to vscode to
         | JetBrains, so ... obviously I'm trying to get into emacs now
        
           | tdhz77 wrote:
           | Companies want developers to buy into editors like religion.
           | All of them (editors) do the same, but spending money on
           | IntelliJ is the hardest flex because it says I'm an
           | enterprise developer look at me.
        
             | addicted wrote:
             | You can get access to all Jetbrains tools for $650/yr for
             | the first year, with the price reducing in subsequent
             | years.
             | 
             | Considering nearly every S/W dev globally can make that in
             | a couple of days, I'm not sure how much of a flex it is
             | considering it would be your primary work tool.
             | 
             | And I say this as someone whose never used a Jetbrains tool
             | and use Vim for nearly everything (except when I'm on
             | Windows where I use a mix of Notepad++ and VSCode).
        
               | bennyp101 wrote:
               | Yea, it's only recently I've been buying licences for
               | things that make my life (as a dev) better
               | 
               | Sometimes you can afford it, and sometimes you can't.
               | 
               | I think we forget when you could (and still can) do dev
               | with a text editor.
               | 
               | I 100% get what you say, but that's a lot of money
               | potentially - which is where I think vscode /vim etc
               | shine in that it's free and can do the same kinda thing
        
             | tclancy wrote:
             | Really? I swapped to PyCharm when I was a solo dev because
             | it had superior code insight compared to the other editors.
             | What is enterprise about it beyond it costing money?
        
               | bennyp101 wrote:
               | Yea that's a weird flex, I get some companies have "use
               | these tools" but that's largely for support and discounts
        
             | Darmody wrote:
             | I've been trying to make VSCode work like PHPStorm. I've
             | tried a huge combination of plugins and there's no way to
             | do it.
             | 
             | It doesn't even come close. It's powerful but it's
             | definitely not the same. I would go back to NetBeans before
             | using VSCode. There's no religion behind it, it's just that
             | there are tools that suit my needs better than others.
        
               | bennyp101 wrote:
               | I paid for Inteliphense, but it's not a shade on using
               | phpstorm - I spent so long on non paid software I missed
               | out on a lot of cool stuff
        
             | bennyp101 wrote:
             | I bought JetBrains myself because I was told about some
             | nice refactoring tools, and they were right.
             | 
             | I don't ask my work to pay, because I use it personally as
             | well, and I look at my brother as a woodworker and he's
             | honed his tools to what suits him.
             | 
             | I do the same.
        
               | dmingod666 wrote:
               | Same here, they have good IDEs and I think it's worth the
               | price if you're working on it for such a long time each
               | day.
        
           | poetaster wrote:
           | In the end you run emacs in evil mode.
        
         | ren_engineer wrote:
         | I'm more skeptical of MS/Github taking over the entire
         | developer ecosystem. Have to admire their execution of this
         | strategy so far
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Nope, I am just dragged into it for workflows where there are
         | no options, I rather stay on IDEs and native editors otherwise.
         | 
         | Still have some hope that eventually it gets redone in React
         | Native or something.
        
         | chasely wrote:
         | I've been using a highly-tuned emacs configuration as my IDE
         | for a decade now. Each time I want try to switch to VS Code I
         | find that all my weird little shortcuts are going to take a lot
         | of time to re-learn in VS Code.
         | 
         | I should really just take the time to switch to VS Code and rip
         | off the bandaid since I think it would make life easier in the
         | long run.
        
           | poetaster wrote:
           | Can't believe I say this again. Emacs in evil mode.
        
           | droobles wrote:
           | VS Code is nice! I need to give emacs another whirl, I
           | learned Vim because I like working on a more lightweight
           | cloud dev server while I travel.
        
           | dleslie wrote:
           | Vscode is to emacs what html5+css3 is to tex.
           | 
           | Emacs will be around forever, but vscode will dominate.
        
         | kumarvvr wrote:
         | I am a developer for almost 15 years now. My primary operating
         | system is windows. I have used Linux but only sparingly.
         | 
         | I have used many IDEs.
         | 
         | I have never ever felt the _need_ to use vim.
         | 
         | Is it fair to say, because VSCode does not have a "vim mode",
         | it is somehow inferior as an editor?
         | 
         | I seriously don't get it. I have used VSCode almost from day
         | one. It is a fantastic editor and quite a capable tool. I
         | seriously love it.
        
           | jagged-chisel wrote:
           | VSCode does little out of the box. You install plugins to get
           | what you want. Including vim mode.
        
             | kumarvvr wrote:
             | Exactly my point. Everyone gets a customized flavour.
             | 
             | Everyone can use it as its meant to be, a great tool
             | platform that has a great community of plugins and support.
        
             | dleslie wrote:
             | Indeed, vscode is more an emacs competitor than vim
             | competitor.
        
           | ayushnix wrote:
           | > Is it fair to say, because VSCode does not have a "vim
           | mode", it is somehow inferior as an editor?
           | 
           | Is VSCode an inferior editor compared to Vim/Neovim?
           | Absolutely, it is. Is Vim/NeoVim an inferior IDE experience
           | compared to VSCode despite the ongoing evangelism by NeoVim
           | fundamentalists? Most likely, yes.
           | 
           | Here's an example before I start getting flak -- NeoVim
           | doesn't have stable indent visualization lines and stable and
           | sensible code folding support. Try writing serious Markdown
           | documentation or Python code in NeoVim and then in VSCode.
           | 
           | The NeoVim website also mentions that being like an IDE is
           | not one of its goals.
           | 
           | I already know the responses I'm gonna get - it's open
           | source, submit patches or shut up, it's personal taste, those
           | features are irrelevant etc etc.
           | 
           | > I seriously don't get it. I have used VSCode almost from
           | day one. It is a fantastic editor and quite a capable tool. I
           | seriously love it.
           | 
           | You should keep using it. Don't get swayed by people
           | proselytising Neovim.
        
             | konart wrote:
             | >NeoVim doesn't have stable indent visualization lines
             | 
             | https://github.com/lukas-reineke/indent-blankline.nvim/
        
               | ayushnix wrote:
               | https://github.com/lukas-reineke/indent-
               | blankline.nvim/issue...
        
           | mytailorisrich wrote:
           | I have never used vim in my life (20 years in dev. including
           | on linux and used linux since the late 90s). Many people talk
           | about vim lately, probably the most I've seen and I'm still
           | not sure why.
           | 
           | That said, VSCode is very good. But I don't believe in a web-
           | based IDE and in remote Github repos. That's a recipe for
           | disaster and unescapable vendor lock-in, and in any case it's
           | only an option for web dev., really.
           | 
           | Edit: Since some people always take things literally: I have
           | of course _tried_ vim, like most people who ever worked with
           | Unix /Linux I suppose, but never got beyond that. I am
           | surprised that it seems to have become so "fashionable"
           | lately. There are many alternatives to vi/vim and many IDEs.
           | My experience is that vi has always suffered from its
           | interface and has struggled to expand beyond "bearded Unix
           | gurus"...
        
             | TooKool4This wrote:
             | > Many people talk about vim lately, probably the most I've
             | seen and I'm still not sure why.
             | 
             | Extrapolating from personal experience, I think this might
             | be down to Covid WFH where more people have had to ssh into
             | remote machines and may need to edit files so might choose
             | to use vim as it's easily available. And vim is something
             | that I find is better learned progressively where you pick
             | up 1 or 2 tricks every week or something so those people
             | might have been able to pick it up over the last year or so
             | and are now evangelizing it.
        
               | Godel_unicode wrote:
               | For what it's worth, you can open a remote directory via
               | SSH from vscode.
               | https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/linux
               | 
               | Want to have your mind blown? Microsoft (yes that
               | Microsoft) officially supports remote development on
               | Windows Server via SSH. As in, run vscode on your Linux
               | box, create an SSH remote on your Windows Server, develop
               | remotely on the server via SSH. Fully supported.
        
               | mytailorisrich wrote:
               | I'm curious: What is a typical use case for this?
        
               | 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
               | Porting cross-platform projects to the operating system
               | that looks and feels very different to pretty much
               | everything else out there. I prefer doing that from the
               | comfort of my primary desktop OS.
        
               | 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
               | >supports remote development on Windows Server via SSH
               | 
               | I was excited for this as a way to avoid touching Windows
               | altogether, but it works pretty crappily in my
               | experience.
        
               | mytailorisrich wrote:
               | Yes, you may be right.
               | 
               | I have also been WFH because of Covid but haven't had to
               | change much or anything to my way of working and I do SSH
               | to multiple machines every day. That might vary a lot
               | from person to person, though. I have avoided doing
               | actual dev. on a remote machine by setting up a VM to run
               | Linux locally as any sort of remote desktop tends to be a
               | pain.
               | 
               | Also, with distributed source control (git and friends)
               | there is usually no need to access remote source files.
        
             | castis wrote:
             | Well of course you're "still not sure why"; you've "never
             | used vim". How does one understand something they've never
             | experienced?
        
             | dec0dedab0de wrote:
             | How have you avoided vim this long? What did you edit
             | config files with? I guess maybe if you mean you just used
             | vi instead
        
               | nicoburns wrote:
               | You can use graphical editors over SSH.
               | 
               | I personally tend to install micro, or use nano if that's
               | not possible.
        
               | mytailorisrich wrote:
               | If I just need to do a quick edit of a text file from the
               | CLI I usually use nano, as well.
               | 
               | For dev. I use an graphical editor, usually VSCode these
               | days. I used emacs at some point a long time ago.
               | 
               | The good thing with git and al is that there is no need
               | to access a remote repo., and that's one of the points,
               | so there is usually no need to edit source files
               | remotely.
        
               | dec0dedab0de wrote:
               | I had to google, I didn't realize nano was around 20
               | years ago. I didn't know it existed until about 2012, but
               | I guess that makes sense then.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | whitepaint wrote:
           | What if you ssh into a server? What if you want to quickly
           | edit some file while you are on a terminal?
        
             | Kiro wrote:
             | It's not like you can't use vim ever just because VSCode is
             | your primary editor.
        
             | tlrobinson wrote:
             | It's essential to know the basics of a terminal editor
             | (vim, nano/pico, whatever), but for heavy lifting VSCode
             | has a remote SSH plugin. It's good enough I often use it
             | for developing on a Linux box from my macOS machine.
             | 
             | There's also a "code" command that will open a file or
             | directory in VS Code.
        
           | azalemeth wrote:
           | I'm someone who also writes code for a living. Linux and
           | MacOS are my primary OSes (in that order). I've used Windows,
           | but only sparingly.
           | 
           | I've written a lot of C, a _lot_ of scripting languages, and
           | a bit of C++. I 've used many IDEs.
           | 
           | For me, the "command line" workflow of Makefiles, vim & gdb
           | are really, well, great. When I was a graduate student, I did
           | a lot of pair-programming with a vim wizard who showed me
           | just how _insanely_ fast one can be with it -- it 's small,
           | but extensible. Sufficiently intelligent that you can open a
           | 10 GB+ text file in it, jump to a certain line, make a change
           | and exit; all before VS/VSCode would have opened. It's an add
           | on to an IDE. Sometimes, for me, it replaces it.
           | 
           | I've never ever felt the _need_ to use VS, or VSCode. I know
           | other devs love VS for C++, but _I_ love vim - VS feels like
           | a big, bloated IDE where you have to memorise the location of
           | 4e6 different GUI positions and take your hands continually
           | off the keyboard to do anything. Intellisense (and, to a
           | lesser extent, Windows as a whole) deeply irritates me. Vim
           | has a weird, esoteric language with a learning cliff rather
           | than a learning curve -- but I 've used it almost from day
           | one. It lets me feel incredibly powerful; it's light, yet has
           | more features than I will ever need.
           | 
           | You and I are different. We've got different interests,
           | different application areas in mind, and different
           | preferences for how to write code and debug it. _And that 's
           | okay_! The key to being productive is _accepting_ that people
           | are different, work differently under different
           | circumstances, and have different strengths, skills, and
           | preferences. It 's much better to be accommodating of them,
           | rather than stifle them, and leave a proportion of your staff
           | frustrated.
           | 
           | I'm just very slightly peeved that _your_ preferences are
           | being chosen by Github as a defacto default $EDITOR, but that
           | there is _no option whatsoever_ for mine - despite the fact
           | that javascript vim  / emacs "modes" are recognised as being
           | almost religious, with highly developed FOSS javascript
           | libraries nearly offering both keybindings and an
           | implementation for either editor at a click of a button [e.g.
           | 1] that have been around for >10 years.
           | 
           | On top of that, I can't help but notice that Github is
           | usually very accommodating with individual developers'
           | preferences -- to the extent there are often multiple ways of
           | doing things as a result. The fact that, now, both Github and
           | VSCode are both Microsoft products -- and that Microsoft
           | famously likes people to use its "infrastructure", which is
           | often orthogonal to the rest of the world -- just makes a
           | little tiny bit of me feel like this is a change being pushed
           | upon us, as originally explained in their "Embrace, Extend,
           | Extinguish" strategy. I get it, it's a neat feature in beta,
           | and it'll directly benefit some large proportion of their
           | users. But if they're going to deploy fully equipped editors
           | to the web, I'd like to have the ability to chose mine -- and
           | give you the freedom to choose yours. I can't help but think
           | that if this feature was developed prior to their acquisition
           | by Microsoft, it wouldn't be VSCode that was deployed.
           | 
           | [1] https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace
        
             | eveningsteps wrote:
             | > ... VS feels like a big, bloated IDE where you have to
             | memorise the location of 4e6 different GUI positions and
             | take your hands continually off the keyboard to do
             | anything.
             | 
             | it sounds like you are completely ignoring the command
             | palette, which allows for a quick, keyboard-only way of
             | interacting with VS Code. have you given it a chance?
        
             | kumarvvr wrote:
             | > VS feels like a big, bloated IDE where you have to
             | memorise the location of 4e6 different GUI positions
             | 
             | This one sentence convinces me that you have not used
             | VSCode in any meaningful way.
             | 
             | I ditched GUI items for getting stuff done long time ago
             | with VSCode. I just bring up the command palette and type
             | away. Its insanely great.
        
               | subsection1h wrote:
               | > _I ditched GUI items_
               | 
               | When I tried VS Code, it wasn't even possible to hide the
               | tabs. As a long-time user of Emacs and highly-
               | configurable X window managers, the inability to remove
               | useless graphical elements like tabs made VS Code
               | unbearable.
        
               | azalemeth wrote:
               | That sentence referred to the versions of VS I have used,
               | not VS Code :-).
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | They share many of the shortcuts, actually.
        
           | jasonjayr wrote:
           | VSCode _does_ have a vim mode.
           | 
           | See this plugin here: https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim
           | 
           | It works surprisingly well.
        
             | lucis wrote:
             | Indeed, they have done such an amazing work! I usually find
             | my self using the best of Vim and VSCode at the same time.
             | 
             | I also enjoy the emulated plugins (vim-surround mostly).
        
             | jpeeler wrote:
             | I haven't run this long enough to definitely say that it's
             | better, but this in theory should offer more correct vim
             | behavior: https://github.com/asvetliakov/vscode-neovim
        
               | city41 wrote:
               | I've been using it for a couple months now as my main
               | editor. Overall I really like it. It's just a touch
               | laggy. So for example if you press esc then try to do a
               | normal mode command, sometimes your key presses still go
               | into insert mode.
        
             | whimsicalism wrote:
             | It's pretty good, although I've found it a bit funky with
             | copy/paste/yanking.
        
               | rattray wrote:
               | That part of the codebase needs a big overhaul and could
               | use finding!
        
               | lucis wrote:
               | Try adding "vim.useSystemClipboard": true to your
               | VSCode's settings. Works mostly fine for me...
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | itronitron wrote:
         | I tried VS Code for over a year and consider it severely
         | lacking features that most IDEs had fifteen years ago. GitHub
         | should reconsider whether they really want to be reminding
         | everyone that MSFT owns them.
        
           | jollybean wrote:
           | Yes, they leave this out too often.
           | 
           | And - I find the constant change in configurations very
           | confusing, and the plugins also have scant documentation. I
           | can tell 'what is installed' but not exactly how they work
           | together.
           | 
           | Having tied out JetBrains after years away - I'm now
           | permanently back in the IDE camp. For whatever reason they
           | are now 'faster' and so the extra bulk of features comes
           | pretty much for free, and they are just well optimized for
           | whatever you're trying to do.
           | 
           | Java on VSCode is frankly full of little snags. C++ same.
           | 
           | VSCode is a handy go-to tool for quickly looking at code from
           | any language.
           | 
           | For pilfering through some open-source Java, Dart, Rust, that
           | little C project, Python ... the VS is it.
           | 
           | But for mainline projects, a good IDE is it.
        
           | tmccrary55 wrote:
           | Same here. I've been told by various people how fast and
           | efficient it is but it uses as much memory as a Windows VM
           | and the code completion is screwed up 50% of the time for MS
           | tech (and worse for others).
           | 
           | It is usable just not very good, yet.
        
           | symlinkk wrote:
           | What features?
        
         | blacktriangle wrote:
         | Nope you're not alone, the hype behind VSCode just seems wierd.
         | It's not a bad editor by any means, but I can't figure out why
         | its any different than the parade of TextMate, Sublime, Atom
         | that came before.
        
         | bewuethr wrote:
         | The web-based editor doesn't have a terminal, but the full-
         | blown codespaces do have one, and they let you import your
         | dotfiles (including running a bootstrapping script if necessary
         | [1]).
         | 
         | From there, you can run whatever terminal-based editor you
         | want, or so the blog post about github.com development having
         | moved to Codespaces tells me [2].
         | 
         | But for the lighter-weight web-based editor, it doesn't look
         | like it. If you're a CLI person, you could browse using the
         | GitHub CLI and clone repos from there to start editing; not as
         | convenient as punching a single key to get from viewing in a
         | browser to editing, though.
         | 
         | [1]: https://docs.github.com/en/codespaces/customizing-your-
         | codes...
         | 
         | [2]: https://github.blog/2021-08-11-githubs-engineering-team-
         | move...
        
         | wayneftw wrote:
         | Old man here - not sure what VS Code has to do with age, but I
         | would rather use it than anything else.
         | 
         | Does it load fast and offer the features I want? Yes. Within
         | reason, that's all I care about. I don't know what the perfect
         | codebase size is for you (4mb? 16kloc?), but if that matters to
         | you I hope you get to use that product.
        
         | Shorel wrote:
         | No sir. I jumped on the SublimeText bandwagon long ago, and I
         | don't see any reason to change to a slower editor.
        
         | moogly wrote:
         | No, even though I like this feature and use it, I normally
         | don't use VSCode other than as a text editor for random stuff.
         | 
         | My main drivers are IntelliJ products (WebStorm, Rider, CLion,
         | DataGrip...).
         | 
         | VSCode is just too sluggish for me.
        
         | brundolf wrote:
         | I'm fully bought-in to VSCode, though I can still appreciate
         | the benefits of diversity
         | 
         | Unfortunately I really doubt they'll ever offer alternate
         | editors, especially given the technical challenges involved in
         | embedding it in the browser, connecting it to whatever hosted
         | environment it has, etc.
         | 
         | The best you might hope for is that they'll provide a terminal
         | to the workspace, from which I could see text-based editors
         | being available (in fact... I wonder if you could do that from
         | VSCode's built-in terminal)
        
         | sdze wrote:
         | And I still use Netbeans. It really is also not worse than the
         | electron monstrosity VS Code (memory/cpu wise).
        
           | Darmody wrote:
           | NetBeans is the best free and open source IDE, at least for
           | PHP.
           | 
           | It lacks some nice features and improvements that PHPStorm
           | has, but it's pretty good overall. There are a couple things
           | that NetBeans does better than PHPStorm, though.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | Me too, the irony that those that used to bash Swing/Java
           | rather use web sites packaged alongside the browser.
           | 
           | At least this way it makes sense, as a pure Web application.
        
         | mbeex wrote:
         | > Am I alone in not jumping on the Visual Studio [Code]
         | 
         | These are at least 3 different questions:
         | 
         | 1) Why should I use VS Code in general?
         | 
         | 2) Why should I use VS Code online? (the articles topic)
         | 
         | 3) Why should I use VS?
         | 
         | The answers might turn out completely different.
         | 
         | Personally, I have for my main languages (C++ & Python) full
         | IDE's (VS & Wing IDE). For quick Python scripts, VSCode is
         | considered an option that I use rather often.
         | 
         | In what VSCode shines is - as also other commenters mentioned -
         | his plugin eco-sytem. This has true swiss-knife traits. So I'm
         | using it for many secondary and ad-hoc technologies:
         | 
         | - CMake files
         | 
         | - Julia
         | 
         | - GPS files
         | 
         | - JS files
         | 
         | - LaTeX
         | 
         | - JSON
         | 
         | - XML
         | 
         | - CSS
         | 
         | - Markdown (vanilla, asciidoc, ReST)
         | 
         | - remote editing
        
           | SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
           | VS is unrelated to VS Code. VS is a full IDE for C++ and C#
           | and the other .NET languages (and some other things like C to
           | a lesser extent).
           | 
           | VS Code is a decent text editor with a good plugin ecosystem.
           | It's faster to start (if it doesn't have too many slow
           | plugins) than most IDEs and easier to get used to than vi-
           | based editors or EMACS. And unlike Sublime Text it's free.
           | Unlike Notepad++ it's cross-platform.
           | 
           | I personally use CLion for C (as well as Markdown, CMake, and
           | shell scripts that are part of the same project as the C),
           | PyCharm for Python, DataGrip for SQL, and VS Code for various
           | text tasks like log file analysis and quick note taking.
           | 
           | It's a handy editor, very useful for ad-hoc work but not
           | really advantageous compared to a full IDE for most regular
           | day-to-day work IMO.
        
             | mbeex wrote:
             | You should probably re-read the quote I was referring to.
        
         | gtirloni wrote:
         | Are the other $EDITORS able to run inside a web browser?
        
           | luke2m wrote:
           | Phoenix (https://github.com/aicore/phoenix) is working on
           | brackets in the browser.
        
             | gedy wrote:
             | Man, I loved Brackets (Phoenix is a fork) when it came out.
             | Much nicer than Atom, but then VSCode got much better and
             | took over most of the mindshare.
        
           | chrisco255 wrote:
           | Gotta be web-based and only other major one I know of is
           | Atom, which was originally started by GitHub and is also
           | owned by Microsoft now. Don't know if people are still using
           | it much though.
        
             | joshuaissac wrote:
             | There was also Adobe Brackets, but it was discontinued
             | earlier this month.
        
               | luke2m wrote:
               | The community is working on it now at
               | https://github.com/brackets-cont/brackets .
        
               | hnlmorg wrote:
               | I really liked Brackets for CSS files.
        
         | headmelted wrote:
         | Yes, you're alone you luddite (kidding!).
         | 
         | Each to their own really, and honestly not every tool is going
         | to be a good fit for every project. I have day work on Visual
         | Studio that I wouldn't dream of moving to VSC for a bunch of
         | reasons.
         | 
         | The reasons myself and others like VSC also have a lot to do
         | with the plug-in ecosystem. More people using it means someone
         | has likely already encountered my use case which means it's
         | more likely a plugin exists to do what I need.
         | 
         | There are places that live on JetBrains for this reason
         | (sprawling homogenous codebases that cross domains and
         | languages). Having support to hand not only for the code you
         | use most, but every language/framework other folks in your
         | organisation use, is a really useful feature for
         | integration/debugging work.
        
           | beardyw wrote:
           | The range of support is great. I can program and run web
           | front end, node, plain C or C++ for desktop, same for
           | programming various chips, and ESP (using platformio), all
           | from one familiar editor.
           | 
           | I would now feel uncomfortable using anything else.
        
         | whateveracct wrote:
         | Nah you aren't. I have tried it multiple times and it's just
         | such a worse experience than emacs for me I won't waste my
         | time.
         | 
         | IDEA is the same way. Turns out coding isn't about text input
         | after all.
        
           | donmcronald wrote:
           | I used to use VSCode as a quick editor for small things, but
           | the bloat seems to be accelerating. I really like Jetbrains
           | editors (and pay for them). My biggest complaint about both
           | is how they're so in your face about every little feature. I
           | see you have this thing, should I enable feature X for you?
           | It looks like you're editing a Docker file. Should I enable
           | Docker integration.
           | 
           | I guess I'm a pair programmer with Clippy now :-(
        
         | lvncelot wrote:
         | An in-browser (neo)vim instance with a dotfiles repo
         | integration would really be something.
        
           | dmurray wrote:
           | Firenvim exists for in-browser neovim. I haven't used it.
           | 
           | [0]https://github.com/glacambre/firenvim
        
             | lvncelot wrote:
             | I'm currently using firenvim (It's great!), but you need a
             | local neovim instance for it to work.
             | 
             | I was thinking of something that would allow you to use any
             | machine with a browser.
        
       | reacharavindh wrote:
       | Not strictly on point, but a tangential thought...
       | 
       | When are going to get JavaScript accelerators in hardware and
       | OSes such that we can have a few tabs with full blown softwares
       | like "VSCode IDE", "Slack", "Spotify", "Outlook mail", "Zoom for
       | video calls", "Photoshop for your photos in the cloud" and many
       | others?
       | 
       | The only thing to install on your client computer being a crazy
       | optimised web browser!
       | 
       | May be ChromeOS was ahead of its time.
        
         | andix wrote:
         | Chrome/Chromium is kind of an own OS already.
         | 
         | And the direction will probably be WASM instead of Javascript.
         | It seems like JS runtimes are not easy to optimize further.
        
       | SquibblesRedux wrote:
       | As someone who uses git from the command line, I am finding the
       | web-based editor extremely unintuitive and difficult to use for
       | common git operations.
        
         | lolive wrote:
         | Apart from that [true fact], VSCode being available directly is
         | HUGE !
        
       | maxioatic wrote:
       | _You can open any GitHub repository in the web-based editor in
       | the following ways:
       | 
       | - Pressing the dot ( . ) key while browsing any repository on
       | GitHub.
       | 
       | - Change the URL from "github.com" to "github.dev"._
       | 
       | rad
        
         | asicsp wrote:
         | > _Pressing the dot ( . ) key while browsing any repository on
         | GitHub_
         | 
         | Is there a way to disable this option? (to avoid accidentally
         | opening up the editor). Couldn't find info on this from the
         | linked page.
        
           | tehbeard wrote:
           | Doesn't look like there is, or for any other keyboard
           | shortcut on GitHub...
        
       | throwaway47292 wrote:
       | It seems we are moving to a world of magic, where developers will
       | be alchemists, and only a handful of people will understand
       | "physics" or "chemistry" and know what is actually going on in
       | the cloud, serverless, fileless, functionless development.
       | 
       | Since google translate and google maps, I always ask myself, what
       | is the real price for this very convenient and engaging product.
        
         | jrochkind1 wrote:
         | While I learned assembly language and machine code and a _tiny_
         | bit of electrical engineering in school over 20 years ago, and
         | I think it was helpful to have a basic understanding of how
         | computers work at that level... I don 't remember the details,
         | and certainly haven't had to use them in my career as a
         | programmer, and you don't really need to understand this stuff
         | to be a solid programmer.
         | 
         | Computers are devices for abstracting, always have been.
         | 
         | If we had to understand everything down to do anything, we'd
         | still be at the punchcard stage of computing, and not doing
         | anything more sophisticated than was done then.
        
         | ausudhz wrote:
         | I see this happening a lot with the young engineers. Very few
         | of them really know what's happening under the hoods.
        
           | goto11 wrote:
           | Does _anybody_ really know anything which goes on under the
           | hood, all the way down to transistors? I think it is half a
           | century since this was even possible for a single person.
        
             | philote wrote:
             | A degree in Computer Science should teach you most of those
             | things.
        
             | throwaway47292 wrote:
             | haha maybe Christopher Domas knows :D
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmTwlEh8L7g [x86 god mode]
             | 
             | but there is a difference between knowing vaguely how
             | internal combustion engine works versus treating your car
             | as a magic box from the future. (which of course now most
             | cars are, you can not even disable the tire pressure alert
             | after you pump your tires without going to the service
             | shop)
             | 
             | I fear that nobody will even teach the fetch-execute cycle
             | to our kids.
        
               | goto11 wrote:
               | https://nandgame.com is a great introduction to such
               | stuff. But that is just a single layer. The problem with
               | computing is not that the individual layers are difficult
               | to understand, is it the sheer _amount_ of layers.
               | 
               | I follow the rule of thumb that you should understand the
               | layer you are working at, and one layer below.
               | Understanding all they layers is great, but will take you
               | a lifetime.
        
               | kalium-xyz wrote:
               | Nandgame is awesome. really like the new levels. Adding
               | the relay level made it more grounded in reality and the
               | maze is fun.
        
           | debarshri wrote:
           | I am pretty much sure engineers from late 70s said the same
           | for young engineers. Same for the engineers from 80s for
           | those in 90s. And the trend continues. I think servers
           | becomes the new processors and the abstraction gets higher
           | and higher.
           | 
           | It is the nature of evolution whether you like it or not.
        
             | ausudhz wrote:
             | Doesn't change anything. It's still a problem till you've
             | to support something that is crucial and only few people
             | know about it.
             | 
             | Otherwise we'll end up recalling the retired programmers
             | that know cobol because nobody else can fix it anymore.
        
             | pjmlp wrote:
             | While true, it also depends pretty much on the quality of
             | what the university was teaching during those 3 to 5 years
             | of engineering degree.
        
             | throwaway47292 wrote:
             | that is of course true
             | 
             | but now we are at a day where "Amazon to remove more
             | content that violates rules from cloud service" is on the
             | front of hackernews together with "Visual Studio Code now
             | available as Web based editor for GitHub repos"
             | 
             | evolution or not, i will revolt, if i think the path its
             | taking is harmful. (not that i can do much besides teaching
             | my kid to know how computers work haha)
        
               | debarshri wrote:
               | True, I agree with you and you have all the rights to
               | revolt. But let's say you have an opinion, instead of
               | revolting I would say you should push it on the world and
               | let the world decision whether they agree with you or
               | not. What Amazon and Google is doing is, they are
               | enforcing their opinion by luring you into their eco
               | system. That's one way to make the world compliant to
               | your opinions.
               | 
               | Just revolting in your own universe doesn't get the job
               | of changing the course of evolution.
        
               | throwaway47292 wrote:
               | i used revolt to be more dramatic :)
               | 
               | i meant i will take action against the evolution, and one
               | of the things i can do is spend as much time as i can in
               | educating my daughter.
        
             | rapnie wrote:
             | > I think servers becomes the new processors
             | 
             | Aren't we talking about "SaaS services outside of your
             | control" here?
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | That is why a proper engineering degree should cover all
           | levels.
        
         | jorlow wrote:
         | This is the nature of tools, specialization, and how industries
         | mature. This is the evolution of software eating the world --
         | now it's also eating development itself.
        
         | lolive wrote:
         | VSCode in the browser is available as a standalone server [in
         | case you need to deploy it in your ways]:
         | https://github.com/cdr/code-server
         | 
         | License: MIT
         | 
         | It works insanely well.
        
         | mistercow wrote:
         | Haven't we been in that world for a while now? Some of what
         | used to be deep magic becomes shallow magic, accessible to far
         | more people, while the magic that enables it becomes a deeper,
         | darker art. I also don't think this is particularly unique to
         | computing, except insofar as computing is inherently more
         | accessible than other technologies.
        
         | resizeitplz wrote:
         | Just like "scientist" and "engineer" have fractured into many
         | specialist disciplines, the same is happening (and has happened
         | many times before; when's the last time you wrote assembly?) in
         | the disciplines of "computer science" and "computer
         | engineering".
         | 
         | There will still need to be experts to continue the building
         | and maintenance of services; however, not everyone designing
         | web sites or doing data analytics needs to know in intricate
         | detail the underpinnings of their tools.
        
       | ericmsimons wrote:
       | TL;DR this only lets you edit files, not actually run commands
       | since there's no underlying container (unless you pay by the
       | minute for Github Codespaces).
       | 
       | This is in contrast to WebContainers which launched a few months
       | ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223012) and enables
       | VS Code to run entirely in-browser (including terminal commands)
       | using a WebAssembly based operating system.
       | 
       | Source: worked on WebContainer and am CEO of StackBlitz
        
       | vvoyer wrote:
       | The amazing part is that it's all divs, spans, CSS and very
       | smooth. Congrats!
        
         | raxxorrax wrote:
         | Well, nobody uses <table> to render a table because it has so
         | much baggage that it is incredible slow (implicit calculations
         | for width/height for every cell etc.).
         | 
         | These super fast super browsers we have today? You can kill all
         | of them if you render a table with around 500.000 cells.
         | 
         | So yes, many people use divs and spans for the same
         | functionality.
        
           | c-cube wrote:
           | Wait, can these@ same browsers render a table made of 500,000
           | divs + css without crashing?
        
             | raxxorrax wrote:
             | Yes, it is much more performant. They would also render it
             | as a table, but it would be excruciatingly slow.
             | 
             | Problem is the bloated standard for html tables that
             | requires many calculations. This is why any browser-excel
             | is implemented with divs.
        
       | sidk24 wrote:
       | I am still proud of
       | [github1s](https://github.com/conwnet/github1s)
       | 
       | No Credits given :( =>
       | https://github.com/conwnet/github1s/issues/346
        
         | SCdF wrote:
         | Dude github1s was an outstanding idea, and I use it frequently.
         | I'm surprised GH didn't steal it sooner. Sucks they didn't
         | credit you or github1s in any way, but I guess at this point
         | you've been well and truly sherlocked :-(
        
         | _fat_santa wrote:
         | I'd like to think that the Github team saw Github1s and decided
         | to bake the feature right into Github.
        
         | habosa wrote:
         | github1s is one of my favorite magical UX things in years,
         | thank you for making it.
        
         | Kichererbsen wrote:
         | was that you? i _love_ github1s. used it a few times. thank you
         | so much!
        
         | olingern wrote:
         | "." is a common convention meaning the current directory. I
         | typically open projects locally with "code ." so I don't view
         | this as a complete ripoff; however, a section for "prior art"
         | on Twitter and/or the changelog would have been a nice touch
        
         | dleslie wrote:
         | Are you alleging that GitHub was aware of this and copied it?
         | 
         | Personally, this is the first that I've heard of 1s, but I'm
         | conversely aware that Microsoft has been working on cloud based
         | development with vscode for a while now.
        
           | kerng wrote:
           | I'm sure even Nat Friedman saw github1s because it was high
           | up on HN and he frequents the site.
           | 
           | When I saw github1s on HN a while ago I thought Githuh should
           | just hire whoever built that.
           | 
           | Difficult to argue if it was a plain rip-off or not, because
           | the idea is somewhat obvious if you work in that space.
           | 
           | BUT, it's amazing to see how innovation is driven by
           | individuals and small players faster then large companies -
           | because it's a fact that github1s was first!
        
           | mritchie712 wrote:
           | github1s has 20k stars, so I'd imagine someone on the team
           | saw it. Not saying they "stole it"... it's a pretty obvious
           | idea considering MS owns GH and VS code.
        
         | dlisboa wrote:
         | I noticed it loads and feels much faster than github.dev.
         | Really good job.
        
       | synergy20 wrote:
       | how do I start? do I need enterprise account? went to the page
       | above and found nowhere I can try out.
        
         | _fat_santa wrote:
         | Hit "." on any github repo.
        
           | synergy20 wrote:
           | gave up on vscode two years ago and bought jetbrains when I
           | need a GUI debugger, but I use vim for daily coding.
           | 
           | just hit . and installed vim plugin and it worked well for
           | basic needs, not sure how to get my snippets and some key
           | binding there yet, but this does look nice.
        
         | aembleton wrote:
         | Navigate to a repo and press the . key
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-03 23:02 UTC)