
Visual Studio online available for public preview - rdlou
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/visual-studio-online/
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adityakr082
Came here to tell about a similar project: coder.com They offer a root
environment too which, IMO, is a deal maker for me.

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oaiey
How is this offering that what Eclipse Che offers?

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TomFrost
I love the Remote SSH extension for VSCode (save for the frustrating
workarounds necessary for ssh-agent forwarding -- an absolutely necessary
feature) and expected VSO to be much more streamlined. But I find myself
hitting early walls:

\- No documentation on how to clone a private github repo, gitlab repo, etc.

\- Cloning a private repo on the command line eschews the ability to bootstrap
your VSO instance using the in-repo config, which kills a huge benefit of this
product

\- No documentation on forwarding ssh-agent or injecting RSA keys of any kind

There are some other needs addressed in other comment threads (particularly
registering a remote headless box as a VSO machine) but the above are instant
showstoppers. Perhaps this works with private Azure DevOps repos because of
the login integration? I'd be willing to wager that the majority of folks
interested in this are on other repo hosts, though.

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gketuma
Isn't this what CodeSandbox is?

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orloffm
Interestingly there is 1 white woman per 9 people of color on that page.
Obviously, marketing the tool as accessible is a good thing, but doesn't this
negatively resonate with common blue-collar folk as being a buggy half-baked
corporate thing developed by H1B Indians? I don't have any negativity against
anyone here, but it feels to be a taboo topic which is not touched or
discussed, and I'd like to get some perspective on how it is perceived by
people.

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kissgyorgy
This can be used to set up environments for Open Source projects to ease new
contributors onboarding. Would be cool if I could click a button and I found
myself in a fully set up environment with the project's Git repo checked out.

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alephnan
A solid browser based IDE would pare well with Azure or some other cloud
provider. Specifically, “serverless” products where devs can focus on code,
disregarding environment issues. AWS acquired Cloud9. Google Cloud Function
has an in-browser code editor for inline editing, but it’s not aware of any
language constructs beyond syntax highlighting.

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nshm
So, VS Express 2010 was 500Mb, then VS 2019 Express required 11 Gb for
installation. When it has grown to 100Gb they decided to move it in the cloud.

I said thank you and compiled everything with MINGW on Linux. Apt installed
mingw in 30 seconds. And no pain with perl script to create VS solutions,
import and configure them, same cmake build works just fine.

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samtrack2019
On the image from "Develop from anywhere" I see Paris, SF and Sydney, why is
it that those cities has been chosen?

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lucideer
Most recognisable and most evenly geographically distributed large western
landmarks?

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amq
I'm missing two things:

\- docker-compose support

\- ability to run multiple services from different repos

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lostintangent
Thanks for the feedback! Docker Compose support is on our roadmap, and you can
track progress of it here:
[https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/vsonline/issues/35](https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/vsonline/issues/35).
If you could upvote that issue, that would be much appreciated!

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ChrisLTD
Upvoted. With docker compose support, I'd definitely move away from the
increasingly crusty Cloud9 service from AWS.

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AlexeyBrin
It would be great if there would be a free tier for people that want to learn
C++ with VS. Something that lets you use VS online for small C++ programs
(similar with Compiler Explorer but with support for running the generated
binary) to build and run these small programs.

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einpoklum
No, it would not be great.

We should not condone luring people into reliance on closed proprietary
technology with "free tiers".

It would be great if people organized and got Intellectual Property thoroughly
de-legitimized.

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colechristensen
What's left? What can you own and control and sell and restrict?

The Chinese economy doesn't have intellectual property restrictions to speak
of, would you prefer that economy? (everything is a copy of a copy of a copy
and most of it is terrible)

How do specialist tools get created, things of high value which take a lot of
work to produce and have only a small number of users?

We use money and restrictions on property to allocate resources, if you take
that away there is still allocation, but is it always better? (say, squabbling
wikipedia or stackoverflow zealots)

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einpoklum
1\. Intellectual Property is not about "allocation of resources". IP is not
physical property (which is a separate question). IP is the threat of
punishment for using or copying information.

2\. The Chinese economy actually has plenty of IP restrictions (e.g. Huawei is
very keen on patents); and China is a signatory to the Berne convention. Some
Chinese corporations may have failed to observe it, but this is not legal.

3\. How would specialist tools get created? Depends on whether the economy is
more Capitalist or less so. Maybe large corporations need those tools and will
put money into consortia which produce them. Maybe there are lots of small
organizations, public/state organs, and/or individual artisans/professionals
which need them - so either they pool resources, or the government funds such
projects. If the economy is not money-based, then it's a different kettle of
fish.

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bouke
What is the use case for a hosted Visual Studio Code?

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OutsmartDan
Imagine you are in a cave, for no apparent reason, and your computer is no
where to be found. The only computer there is a n old school terminal that is
somehow running IE11. Your colleague commits something with tabs instead of
spaces and you get the notification on your phone. Now you can easily login to
VSCode online to re-indent everything with spaces, commit and push it back up,
all through your web browser.

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arkitaip
Obviously the way to Captain Kirk yourself out of this Kobayashi Maru
situation would be to use the ancient terminal to bash your head in.

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Havoc
I seem to recall that one ending differently. But I guess since we're mixing &
matching...fair play

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lostintangent
Hey All! I’m a PM on the Visual Studio Online team (as well as Live Share and
IntelliCode), and we’re extremely excited to have more developers try out the
product. Our goal is to dramatically reduce the cost of setup/onboarding,
enable better team/classroom collaboration, and further support remote
development. We believe that having on-demand, cloud-powered dev environments,
that are accessible from VS Code and the web, provides a huge step towards
achieving that.

Let us know if you have any questions/comments/feedback, since we’re very keen
to begin working with the broader developer community, and learning how we can
continue to improve. Otherwise, check out the service
([https://aka.ms/vso](https://aka.ms/vso)), and then let us know what you
think
([https://GitHub.com/microsoftdocs/vsonline](https://GitHub.com/microsoftdocs/vsonline)).

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ebg13
> _the Visual Studio Online team...VS Code..._

So this is _NOT_ Visual Studio but rather VSCode? Do you have insight into why
Microsoft keeps making misleading product names? Would it be so horrible to
name it VSCode Online instead of Visual Studio Online?

> _Let us know if you have any questions_

The website says "Use the programming languages and frameworks of your
choice". Will that include building and debugging C++ Win32 MFC applications?

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gameswithgo
This is from the company that came up with .NET to describe an intermediate
bytecode and runtime.

Then later made a new thing called .NET Core which was the same as .NET
Framework but more multi platform. Which was confusing so they came up with
.NET Standard which was an interface describing compatibility between the
other two .NETs

They have their top people working on the .NET jit and compiler, and the VS
Code editor. None left for naming conventions.

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greggyb
My favorite is their cloud platform, Azure, named after the color of a clear
blue sky.

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golergka
Personally, I low how they used the name C# for two completely different
languages ([https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2009/10/05/my-
history...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2009/10/05/my-history-of-
visual-studio-part-1/)).

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greggyb
Also, C# can be read as C++++.

    
    
        C ++
          ++

