
GitHub Codespaces - CraftThatBlock
https://github.com/features/codespaces
======
preya2k
Interestingly, it seems that Microsoft hast just renamed its "Visual Studio
Online" (which was basically the same as this new product) to "Visual Studio
Codespaces". So it seems that they are merging these two products. (See:
[https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/visual-studio-
co...](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/visual-studio-codespaces/))

EDIT: They actually announced the renaming of the product a couple of days
ago: [https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/30/microsofts-visual-
studio-o...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/30/microsofts-visual-studio-
online-code-editor-is-now-visual-studio-codespaces-and-gets-a-price-drop/)

~~~
mcolyer
Codespaces uses the same underlying technology as Visual Studio Codespaces to
bring a fully GitHub-native experience to our GitHub users. We've been working
with multiple teams on the Visual Studio side to make this happen (I work as
the product lead on Codespaces)

~~~
twunde
Similarly Github Actions is reusing a lot of Azure Pipelines under the hood.

One of the most impressive parts about Microsoft's recent acquisitions is how
quickly essentially two separate companies are now sharing code. It's hard
enough to get different teams/products in the same company to use shared code
in a meaningful way, and Microsoft has accomplished it with a new company.

~~~
op03
All that is nice. But who are they building this for? Who is asking for this
stuff?

~~~
twunde
For Github Actions, the product launch has been a major success and has become
a new monetizable product. Anecdotally, I've heard of some companies moving
their Jenkins/Circle CI/Travis CI workflows over to it, better proof is the
sheer number of Github Actions that are now easy to install. This also allows
Github to compete directly with Bitbucket and Bitbucket pipelines.

If your question is about who is asking for Github Codespaces, I'm not totally
sure. Personally, for small changes it would be nice to be able to edit
directly in Github but I certainly wouldn't pay for it. I imagine that core
why behind this product release (besides the fact that most of this
functionality was already pre-built and easy to reuse) is that it improves the
user experience for anyone working from their chromeOS device, tablet and
phone improving brand loyalty and capturing new users, especially students who
may only have chromeOS devices.

~~~
franciscop
As an OSS developer, Github actions make a lot of sense and is very welcome
since it's very easy to setup (now! it was impossible in the beginning) and if
you use bash scripts/npm scripts AND a tiny bit of workflow code then they are
very agnostic as well.

I am unsure about this Github Codespaces though, I'll be testing it but I am
fairly skeptical about invest a lot in Github-specific tooling beyond what is
needed by a typical repo. It seems like Github has been trying to "extend" git
into a proprietary phase for a while, and now with Microsoft backing it I'll
wait to see if it's still the same old concept of locking you in deep and then
do as they please. Not sure, it does look like they are going nice for now,
but I personally prefer to wait.

This Codespaces doesn't solve a specific need I could point out like Actions
did before, but maybe I'm just not their target.

------
xendipity
Ah, this really makes sense with all of the recent work they've done on
VSCode's remote development capabilities.

\- An early announcement on their focus:
[https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2019/05/02/remote-
develo...](https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2019/05/02/remote-development)

\- Most (all?) of their recent VSCode updates include improvements to remote
development. i.e.: [https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_44#_remote-
developm...](https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_44#_remote-development)

\- Facebook partnering and becoming an early, heavy adopter:
[https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2019/11/19/faceboo...](https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2019/11/19/facebook-
microsoft-partnering-remote-development/)

~~~
ivalm
Their remote development capability is amazing and was quite a game changer
for me. Having a nice ide where all of the plugins work on a remote server as
if everything is local is so nice!

~~~
plexicle
The SSH plugin is insanely good. I can dev from a Windows machine and SSH into
my Mac and do React Native (native) iOS modules. Even my zsh shell acts as if
it's local. Running `pod install` from Windows. It's seemless.

~~~
cbhl
+1 to this. $DAYJOB has some proprietary ssh handling, but I can dev from my
work-issued macbook into a Linux desktop in the office and vscode "just works"

~~~
shaklee3
Agreed. It's completely changed my productivity for the better. I don't even
remember the code is remote.

------
pedalpete
My hope and suspicion is this will have a significant impact on the number of
improvements to open-source projects and particularly little things like js
components.

Just in the last few days, I've come across a few very minor bugs, with a one-
line fix. In order to make that change, I currently need to fork the repo,
download it, make the change (turn off my prettier or adapt to the repo's)
then make the PR.

I'm hoping with this I can just make a PR in the owner's package. It's the
difference between a 10 minute commit and a 1 minute change.

~~~
icebraining
Github has had a built-in editor for almost a decade, you just had to click
the Edit button in the file: [https://github.blog/2011-04-26-forking-with-the-
edit-button/](https://github.blog/2011-04-26-forking-with-the-edit-button/)
(the button has since changed look to a Pencil icon)

This is not to disparage you, just to note that it may not have such a great
effect.

~~~
baby
You still have to fork

~~~
waheoo
Because implementing a shadow fork is sooo hard.

~~~
baby
You must be fun at parties

~~~
waheoo
I think you missed the part where i was being positive to new ideas and not
just being a pointless debbie downer.

------
sparky_
Must be fun for @sytse to watch these GitHub announcements every year, where
they consistently release the same thing GitLab rolled out two years prior.

Codespaces ->
[https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide/](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide/)

Insights ->
[https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/insights/](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/insights/)

GH Actions -> [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/)

etc

~~~
threeseed
Gitlab is a bit of a mess though:

a) Gitlab.com is ridiculously slow. Even the CEO admits they failed to invest
in it.

b) You can't disable features you don't need so you end up with a sidebar full
of Kubernetes and Security features for a Git project dedicated to
documentation.

c) Staggering amount of open issues and merge requests so you feel discouraged
from even raising anything since it just gets lost in the weeds.

d) On the main Git project screen there are 15 buttons. Including again ones
for "Add Kubernetes cluster" or "Add License" which you can't remove or hide
even though it's irrelevant for 99% of Git projects.

e) Feature set and billing are all over the place. It has great project/issue
management but in order to get say roadmaps you need to have everyone in your
team on the $99/month plan. Even though they aren't developers. So in some
cases Gitlab ends up being much more expensive than Jira + Github.

I could keep going. But Gitlab is an example of a company that is moving too
fast and needs much better product management. I would take Github's more
deliberate approach any day.

~~~
clenneville
Thank you for your feedback!

Regarding performance, we've made some recent improvements (here's one
example: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
org/gitlab/-/issues/30507#note_293...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
org/gitlab/-/issues/30507#note_293967133)), but we know we need to do more.
We're actively working to improve our sitespeed ([https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/www-gitlab-com/-/issues/7154](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/-/issues/7154)), and we have several other improvements in process this
quarter.

Regarding disabling features and the Git project screen, our UX research team
has heard this feedback from other users. It's fair feedback, and we're
looking at how to address it.

~~~
Lorin
I love GitLab's transparency and the decentralized concept; But I can't
comprehend how some basic features take as long as they do to get done. It
took GitLab _3 YEARS_ to add a "What's new" link to the header:
[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
org/gitlab/-/issues/16653](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
org/gitlab/-/issues/16653) ... and it still isn't closed.

Issues fall through the cracks because there's no internal health oversight,
take this issue for example: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
org/gitlab/-/issues/21907](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
org/gitlab/-/issues/21907) It simply ceased to exist because the original
staff member left GitLab.

I've also seen community MRs with weeks of work go to waste because GL staff
couldn't take proper ownership/responsibility to see them through.

I think having a "all hands" week where all work stops except for going
through current GitLab.org issues, fixing labeling/priorities, adding related
issues and pinging the correct leads would do WONDERS.

Sadly, if GitHub adds scoped labels and descriptions we'll be making a move
over as it's the final piece of the puzzle.

~~~
pknopf
My favorite is when I open an issue and get no response.

Then, after a year, a bot auto-closes the issue due to "inactivity"...

------
bengalister
I understand that many companies will be seduced by the offering and what
could come next:

* No more source code on developers machine so better for security.

* No more development environment to setup and all the devs sharing the exact same settings: simplified onboarding of devs.

* No need for costly developers machines.

* No more infra to setup to host the source code repository, the CI/CD workflows (even if many companies already moved that to the cloud).

But as a developer I am worried what could also come next:

* dashboards for managers with all sort of stats on developers: code quality with arbitrary rules, productivity (number of lines of codes), number of stars from other developers, etc.

* being locked-in with the Microsoft toolchain all along from source code edition to deployment in Azure. For instance currently I chose to do my NodeJs backend development on vim with coc-vim and found it to be much lighter than Vscode (I have a very old developers machine)

~~~
aaanotherhnfolk
They announced developer productivity analytics in the same keynote as they
announced codespaces. It's not just coming, it's here!

Funny enough, after introducing the analytics stuff, they started the next
section by showing that the more code you write the more security
vulnerabilities you have.

Which is it, Github? Do I want to stay on top of your SLOC leaderboards so my
manager doesn't fire me? Or does writing the most lines mean I introduced the
most vulnerabilities so my manager should fire me? The answer depends on which
product github is trying to sell you at that very moment.

~~~
booleandilemma
Do I get points for deleting lines of code?

~~~
toddmorey
You should get double points!

------
swagonomixxx
This is pretty epic. VS Code has proven itself to be one of the best (if not
the best) and feature-complete editor out there. It's basically an IDE of a
ton of languages at this point, and it's completely free. Integrating it with
GH is a no-brainer move from Microsoft's standpoint, to increase market share
even further with more seamless integration.

If they're able to do setup for Python, Go, Ruby, and JavaScript projects, I
suspect that'll be > 50% of all professional work (both FOSS and private) done
on GH.

~~~
skrtskrt
While VS Code is definitely good in general, and first choice for languages
like JavaScript, I find it really hard to compare it to JetBrains PyCharm and
GoLand (understanding GoLand has no free version).

The debugging and refactoring experiences for Go and Python in VSCode feel
slow, awkward to set up and configure and just generally tacked-on.

I have gotten the PyCharm professional and GoLand licensed through my employer
but I will 100% be paying for them out of my own pocket if I ever lose that.

~~~
arodyginc
Even for C# VSCode is way less useful than VisualStudio, which also has a free
version (though doesn't run on Linux)

~~~
twodave
Honestly, unless I'm working on a Windows machine, I find JetBrains Rider to
be the best option for C# specifically. This is especially true if you like
having your tests easily accessible from your IDE.

That said, VSCode is still very nice for front-end pretty much universally,
and it's also great for things like back-end Javascript/Typescript. I think
Codespaces is really going to excel when it comes to things like NodeJS -> AWS
Lambda. Make code changes, run "sls test", done.

~~~
recursive
> This is especially true if you like having your tests easily accessible from
> your IDE.

I haven't used Rider, but I'm curious how it could be easier than the Visual
Studio test explorer? It seems pretty convenient, and doesn't lack any obvious
features I can think of.

~~~
noworriesnate
Minor point: the Rider test explorer tells you why your tests aren't
appearing. Visual Studio's test explorer will just say "You have no tests, try
rebuilding your solution" even if you already rebuilt it.

------
reggieband
Microsoft is really the best at the slow strategic burn.

* You host your project in github

* You fund your project using github sponsors

* You develop your project using github codespaces

* You compile, test and deploy using github actions

* You cloud host on azure

Each individual feature is definitely great. I'm not trying to be critical of
Microsoft trying to turn their investment in github into a profitable
business. This is a kind of vertical integration that is guaranteed to lead to
some efficiencies.

One prediction based on this stack is the next piece could be some sort of
subscription payment architecture. I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of
Microsoft Marketplace integration coming, but maybe branded under github. Some
kind of SaaS subscription enabler.

~~~
suyash
Yup all the free stuff is ultimately to lead us into using and paying for
Azure. Need an open source alternative to GitHub.

~~~
mbreese
Sourcehut would like to have a word...

[https://sr.ht/](https://sr.ht/)

~~~
brightball
I had not seen that...interesting.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Source hut is cool. Among things, it prioritizes exposing and leveraging Git's
existing functionality wherever possible, like email patches, rather than
building new proprietary functionality on top of Git like Github and others
do.

~~~
AgentME
Everything about Github's PR workflow is killer to me, so to me personally the
message I take away from this is that Source Hut isn't even competing with
Github in the parts I care about.

~~~
SkyMarshal
If the one particular aspect I mentioned isn't for you then why even bother
wasting your valuable time responding? Just go read their website instead and
see if there _is_ something for you. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but at
least then you'd know definitively. Much better use of your time and effort.
I'll even save you a few clicks:

[https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-
availabilit...](https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-
availability.html)

[https://sourcehut.org/](https://sourcehut.org/)

~~~
AgentME
I posted because I think my post would be useful to other people who are
considering alternatives to GitHub but also like rich PR workflows like GitHub
has, and because I think it's good to encourage would-be GitHub alternatives
to invest in that area.

I've actually been following Sourcehut's mailing list and updates since
forever because I find their philosophies interesting, but not right or
practical for my own workflow.

~~~
waheoo
Github flow is garbage.

Its broken by design and forces a subpar experience on top of something that
actually fucking works.

Maybe you find it nice and dumbed down, good for you. The rest of us want git
to actually be git.

------
luhn
This is going to be great for open source—Being able to get a fully-configured
dev environment at a click of a button greatly lowers the barrier to entry.
I've had a few small OS contributions where the time to set up the environment
was more than the time I spent programming!

I could also see this being popular with engineering teams. No futzing with
the new hire's computer, just have them open a web browser and they can dive
right in!

~~~
marceloabsousa
I'm not sure if this is really true. Why would you want to become a
contributor to an OSS project if you can't bother to get it working on your
machine? You actually learn quite a bit about the project by going through its
dependency hell.

~~~
aerovistae
Idk, I feel like we've been trained to believe this is necessary. Why you
should need to know more about a dependency than its documented API? This sort
of reminds me of Americans believing their current healthcare situation is the
only way to do it even though it's awful.

~~~
marceloabsousa
Don't get me wrong - I don't think that you should go through it every time.
Also, I'm not sure anyone reads the documented API of a dependency until some
unexpected behaviour is happening. My basic point is that the dependency hell
is not the biggest barrier for an open source contribution. In fact, mixing
both problems is a bit strange to me - codespaces is not going to magically
solve the dependency hell - it's just going to shift it to some other part of
the configuration. The best way to start contributing to an OSS project is
really be to have a mentor in project who could guide you through it during
your first contribution. Personally, I'm willing to fight the machine for a
couple of hours/days to get something to compile -- however, it's hard to
justify reading code for weeks in the hope I can tackle an open issue.

------
iamwil
From Microsoft's point of view, it makes sense to merge Visual code with
Github, as both are their properties. And it walks into the realm of repl.it
and darklang, who are demonstrating people want to shorten the repl loop.

But I'm still wary of Microsoft, and remember them from the 90's. Completely
dominant and ruthless. Even though it's new people now.

I can see them embracing open source development workflow, branching to eat up
everything that has to do with your development workflow. Once Microsoft wins
the ecosystem of open source developer workflow is when they'll start to
leverage it, using it as lead gen for the lucrative cloud/dev ops services.

They're playing a long game to beat Amazon AWS, and to beat off any new
startups with shorter repls.

~~~
mrits
in 5 years: "Please take a break from your coding and watch this short
advertisement"

~~~
milanove
Please drink verification can

------
dmacewen
I wonder if it's usable from an iPad. I haven't tried an online ide before,
but if it works well it could be a great mobile development tool.

It would be awesome if this could be setup as a backend for vim as well. Given
how well Coc.vim integrates with VSCode tooling, I'm cautiously optimistic.

~~~
mcolyer
That's correct it's usable from an iPad during the beta. There are a few known
issues but we're planning on addressing those so that we can support this
workflow (I work as the product lead on Codespaces).

~~~
saagarjha
Does it work with the software keyboard? I seem to recall Monaco not really
supporting mobile.

~~~
mcolyer
I haven't specifically tried it, but I think it would be challenging given how
much screen real estate the keyboard takes.

------
throwaway7281
I'm getting tired of this game. Even the deaf ones like me start to hear the
drums now.

You know, it's not that we do not have enough megacorps controlling every
aspect of our lives. We need more of the "opposite" \- places that empower you
_and_ leave you in peace and control.

------
xd1936
People hate on Electron apps, but it sure enables some cool stuff. I can't
imagine another sustainable way to build a fully-fledged IDE that runs as a
desktop application that people love, _and_ can be run on a remote server
instance, rendered and interacted with in the browser. Amazing.

~~~
vb6sp6
VSCode is a decent app, but I no longer consider it an electron app. It uses
tons of c++ and you'd have to have the cash to buy the electron team (like ms
did) to get anywhere close to what they have done.

~~~
abhinavk
Care to elaborate about the _tons of C++_ part? In their GitHub repo, I can
hardly see any C++ files.

------
danso
I remember listening to Nathan Sobo, one of the founders/creators of Atom,
talking to The Changelog in 2017 about creating Atom and his goal/dream to
make it a collaborative editor, i.e. Google Docs for code [0]. He didn't have
a timeline but he had done research into it:

> _That’s definitely something I wanna do; that’s not really in progress yet.
> I did a bunch of research in that area, so that I can’t really put a
> timeline on. I can definitely say that more async style traditional GitHub
> collaboration will be happening this year. I think there will be a natural
> outgrowth from that into the real-time stuff._

Don't know if Sobo or his Atom colleagues do anything with the VS Code people,
but hearing about Codespaces made me immediately think about his ideas for
cloud editing.

(AFAIK the CodeSpaces presentation didn't mention collaborative editing in its
current feature set)

[0] [https://changelog.com/podcast/241](https://changelog.com/podcast/241)

~~~
bobbylarrybobby
I had a short chat with some members of the VSCode python extension team to
give feedback on their product. They wanted to know how much I’d value
collaborative editing in VSCode. They’re definitely thinking about it.

~~~
eertami
>They wanted to know how much I’d value collaborative editing in VSCode.
They’re definitely thinking about it.

Thinking about it? I thought this was a feature since 2018...

[https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live-
share](https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live-share)

------
Signez
Having some thought about the GitPod folks[0] that provide nearly the same
feature set.

I hope we are not witnessing a big sherlocking being done here, but… it really
looks like one. :/

[0] [https://www.gitpod.io/](https://www.gitpod.io/)

~~~
taywrobel
They already have a blog post up about it -
[https://www.gitpod.io/blog/github-
codespaces/](https://www.gitpod.io/blog/github-codespaces/)

~~~
ta17711771
First time hearing of Theia - thanks!

------
kick
I can only imagine how the people at GitHub paid to work on Atom are feeling
right now.

Microsoft hasn't been kind to them!

~~~
dflock
Pretty sure they haven't been paid to work on Atom since the acquisition:
[https://github.com/atom/atom/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/atom/atom/graphs/contributors)

They killed Atom the day they took over - they haven't had the balls to say
anything publicly, but just go look at the commit graphs in the Atom repos.
Here's a summary:
[https://twitter.com/DuncanLock/status/1177747512905461760](https://twitter.com/DuncanLock/status/1177747512905461760)

~~~
ta17711771
Wow, I was okay with this until I saw the promise to keep Atom around.

That's...scummy.

------
nemacol
At first glance this seems great for me. I was a big fan of Cloud9 before they
were purchased by Amazon.

I was new to dev world and had never touched AWS so the transition to AWS C9
left me bewildered and I just gave up on it.

This seems like this would fill that role for me pretty well.

Bonus points - I currently use Visual Studio Code as my goto tool.

------
riazrizvi
Hypothetically, say I wanted to build, I don't know, a new spreadsheet that
ran Python, runs on macOS and Linux. I hope it will give Excel a run for its
money. Since Excel is so disappointing outside Windows.

Now I know Microsoft has a long history of safeguarding trade secrets, they
were always very aggressive in this regard, from the beginning, the Xerox Parc
days, and they still are. They state in their Investor Report that in Research
& Development, they safeguard trade secrets, and are a world leader in patent
pursuit [1].

Surely I don't need to worry that this platform for online development, tied
to my source code, is not just another step towards making it easier for them
to have a sneak peak into what I'm building? I know they can see my code in
Github, but as a developer I know source code is one thing, but getting code
to compile and run is a lot more work (on a very big project). This would make
it even easier to dip into project runtimes, since IDE and environment
settings are stored online now.

I mean, there's no way that strategically, they would aggressively try to
bulwark their own business lines, by snooping on competing tech, and using
insights to help strategically direct their patent lawyers, advising them on
who to go after an how. And anyway, even if they did do that occasionally,
there's no way they would bully me unjustly, I would surely deserve it. Right?

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar13/financial-
re...](https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar13/financial-
review/business-description/research-development/index.html)

~~~
kace91
Microsoft is pushing for a future with dumb terminals and online services. I
think this is just a move that gets them closer to the point where a low power
tablet/laptop combo (surface like form factor) can be all that a developer
needs to work.

There's a lot of reasons why Microsoft will want that, among them that if they
can sell a solution that works in cheap terminals, they can tie corporate
customers into their bubble by selling them services that allows them to avoid
buying hardware for their employees.

I'm not saying that being wary of Microsoft's ownership of your code isn't
warranted, I'm just saying there are probably less shady/convoluted reasons
why this kind of product benefits them - Occam's razor, etc.

~~~
marviel
I think you're looking for Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that
which is adequately explained by stupidity"

~~~
riazrizvi
I think we need another, Machiavelli's Razor: "Don't attribute a string of
coincidences to accident when they are more neatly explained by self-
interest".

------
ccktlmazeltov
What I've always wanted was to be able to easily browse code on Github:

* a file tree (do-able via the octotree browser plugin)

* clickable functions (Github is doing this on some projects in some languages I've noticed)

* caller tree. Xcode is one of the only navigator doing this, you can see the whole hierarchy of callers and go through them easily.

What we're getting is something really cool, but it does not bring the caller
tree function. It looks like this:

[https://holko.pl/public/images/xcode-search/call-
hierarchy.p...](https://holko.pl/public/images/xcode-search/call-
hierarchy.png)

~~~
voxic11
vscode supports call hierarchy searches, but its not supported by all
languages yet. Support was recently added for java
[https://devblogs.microsoft.com/java/java-on-visual-studio-
co...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/java/java-on-visual-studio-code-update-
january-2020/)

~~~
ccktlmazeltov
I've never seen this in any languages that I use (obviously Java is not in
that list), is there a list somewhere?

~~~
voxic11
I don't know of a central list. It depends on the particular language server
you are using and if it supports the feature. The only other language I use it
with besides java is typescript/javascript.
[https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-
docs/blob/vnext/release-...](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-
docs/blob/vnext/release-notes/v1_43.md#call-hierarchy-support-for-javascript-
and-typescript)

------
davesque
It's a neat idea and kudos to them for executing on this. However, it also
triggers my spidey sense a bit. It makes me concerned about a far-flung future
in which people who opt-out of the VSCode integration get a sub-optimal
experience. Who knows if it will go this way but it may happen very slowly and
without anyone noticing over a period of years. Corporate strategies often
trend this way.

------
jfkebwjsbx
Looks great!

At least now we don't need to run VS Code in another Chromium instance!

Now that Microsoft has Chromium Edge in Windows, it should be possible to
provide a good way to spawn and communicate with Chromium GUIs/windows from
native Win32 apps! That would be killer!

~~~
dstaley
Boy do I have a surprise for you! [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/hosting/webv...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/hosting/webview2)

------
axelfontaine
Exactly as I predicted 2 years ago:
[https://twitter.com/axelfontaine/status/1007887082151469056?...](https://twitter.com/axelfontaine/status/1007887082151469056?s=19)

------
nearmuse
To me it is just something that grew by being distributed being merged into a
monolithic entity. Merging and centralization seems reasonable at some point
to solve big problems and iron out insignificant differences, and computing
has always been swaying between distributed and centralized, but this is one
scary centralization phase for me because it looks unprecedentedly global and
because it concerns developers themselves. I don't like fiddling with
development environments (I kind of liked it first, actually) and toolchains
(especially the web ones) just as much as anyone else, but I am afraid this
might be too much lock-in.

------
Pandabob
This also seems quite similar to repl.it, which I've been enjoying a lot
recently.

I wonder if they'll support plugins and importing other VS Code settings to
the online editor.

~~~
amasad
I doubt you'd get the same quick & simple experience you have with Repl.it.
This is more replacing your local VSCode, which is not what Repl.it aims to
replace.

~~~
jsmith45
this is not even just replacing your local vs code.

This is a minor variation of the existing Visual Studio Online (now renamed
Visual Studio Codespace) product.

The core of it is running an automatically created azure hosted docker
container. It automatically checks out your repository. It actually runs the
whole VS Code backend on the remote machine, with the the user interface being
provided by the "local" VS Code instance (web or desktop).

I'm going to bet this will end up with identical pricing to the existing
product, at least if you don't pay for any github products. If you do, there
might be some discount or included running time with those products.

The only part that sounds new here is the editor integration into the GitHub
site.

------
lostinroutine
I wonder how they will (did?) work around the keyboard shortcuts that Chrome
reserves (and doesn't propagate to the page). For example, Cmd+T in VSCode
opens up the quick search panel, while in Chrome it opens a new tab.

------
ksec
One of the hardest part getting anyone into Programming is actually setting up
their Dev environment. ( You have many different platform, OS version or other
compatibles issues... etc. And most student dont have clue about any of these
) You then have to teach them basic Git ( Github ) usage.

Cloud9 could be great but hasn't gotten any traction apart from using it for
some tutorials.

This Codespaces brings the best of both world and kill two birds with one
stone.

The next step is Azure, hopefully they could have an Amazon Lightsail
equivalent that is simple to understand and deploy without scaring beginners
away.

~~~
nearmuse
I think that setting up your development environment is often an ironically
pleasant and linear (i.e. easy) task that is a matter of following some
tutorials and that might make a beginner feel like they are accomplishing
something. There were always plenty of tutorials for doing that as well, and I
can imagine it is not least because developers like sharing their experience
by writing them. Of course after some time it becomes a hassle and one just
wants to have their setup the habitual way, but in the beginning for me at
least it felt like accomplishing something.

------
CraftThatBlock
I hope they allow to run the VMs on local hardware. I would love to use my
desktop resources (more than they are offering, which is still generous) for
this feature.

I think Chromebooks are going to be a great use for this. Lightweight client
but full editor and environment, with no hassle.

~~~
filmgirlcw
I’m not sure if you can bring your own machine[1] with GitHub Codespaces, but
you can with Visual Studio Codespaces, which has the same underlying
tech/featureset. (Visual Studio Codespaces was known as Visual Studio Online
until last week) it basically does exactly what you want, let’s you use your
dedicated local resources on another machine or remotely via the browser or
using VS Code proper.

I work at Microsoft on Azure but not with VS Codespaces or with GitHub
Codespaces — I’m just a big fan/user/beta tester.

[1]: [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/bring-your-
own-m...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/bring-your-own-machine-
to-visual-studio-online/)

~~~
CraftThatBlock
Thank you, very interesting! I use IntelliJ mostly, and this is something I
wish was available on that platform

------
factorialboy
So.. let's say I host my source code with MS (GitHub), I develop using their
web ide (visual studio code space) and then I deploy to their cloud (azure).

Give it a decade and you'll have Microsoft specific developers and
organizations who are locked in beyond rescue.

It's always a fragmentation vs defragmentation battle.

~~~
donmcronald
It's going to be ALL developers getting locked in. You're seeing a 5-10 year
plan in action here.

1\. Create a popular, locally run dev editor.

2\. Shift it to the cloud.

3\. Build all new features into the cloud version only.

4\. Ignore the locally run version until it's obsolete.

5\. Developers rent the cloud version forever.

The GitHub integration is going to be amazing for Microsoft because the allure
of clicking a button and getting an instant development environment will be
huge. Watch for a big campaign where popular frameworks start providing
"Launch in Codespaces" or similar buttons.

We'll get to a point where new developers won't even know how to set up a
local development environment. I'd bet a lot that Microsoft is envisioning a
world where developers pay $1000+ per year for a combination of GitHub,
Codespaces, Actions, Pipelines, etc..

The idea of paying cloud compute rates for things like build agents is crazy
to me, but here we are.

~~~
marceloabsousa
For me, the real appeal is to be able to share dev environments easily and
make software development truly remote friendly.

In the end, it will come down to latency, usability and pricing. I do agree
with you though - I'm not paying $2K+ for a macbook pro and then pay to run
VSCode in the cloud -- something doesn't add up.

~~~
jsmith45
I'm not clear on how this will make things easier. The default "environments"
are just docker container defined in this repo:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-dev-
containers/](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-dev-containers/) except that
you can leave them suspended when not using them. (For the non-GitHub version
this is literally a VM provisioned by way of running a single pre-specified
docker container. Suspending is presumably just suspending the whole VM. In
the beta the GitHub branded version will not persist processes, so it would be
more like stopping the VM when not in use rather than just suspending it.)

As for the pricing, it will likely be in the same ballpark as the non-github
branded version of this exact same service (modulo any included time with a
paid github subscription): [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/pricing/details/visual-stu...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/pricing/details/visual-studio-online/)

The estimated costs for full time development for one user with only one
environment is ~$23.30/month.

Each environment you leave in a suspended state for a whole month would cost
$6.40. OF course, if you are willing to have your filesystem wiped and rebuild
each time you start and stop coding, you can destroy the environments when not
in use, in which case you will probably want to create a custom dockerfile to
customize the environment.

------
underdeserver
I like how they say that if you don't want to develop in a browser, you can
connect VS Code. You're still developing in a browser.

Still a great IDE though.

~~~
tomnipotent
> You're still developing in a browser.

How so? Node/Electron != browser, though I see how the whole HTML/JS/CSS thing
can be confusing.

~~~
IAmLiterallyAB
It's a browser without an address bar.

~~~
seph-reed
or any http connections...

------
mkchoi212
What languages does this support? It would be super cool if this supports
`xcodebuild` :O

~~~
mcolyer
We support all languages that can run within a Linux container, see
[https://github.com/mcolyer/codespace-
containers/blob/master/...](https://github.com/mcolyer/codespace-
containers/blob/master/base/Dockerfile) for a base example image (I work as
the product lead on this).

~~~
pgroves
Well then I'm glad you're here...Is it possible to integrate with an existing
Dockerfile? My team's main build is handled by an image that is a result of
years of fine-tuning and files with external dependency definitions (like
requirements.txt for pip). Getting all of that installed in github's container
is only slightly easier than getting it all installed in a desktop IDE, which
is currently prohibitively difficult for us. We don't want to end up with a
second platform we have to maintain.

More generally, is there going to be a clean way to to use this if we already
have a containerized stack, especially editing code in a user's existing
container? (With the code still under version control, of course)

------
raghavtoshniwal
"given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" If this succeeds in reducing the
friction for someone to submit a patch/bug fix, the number of 'eyeballs' for
open-source projects would increase substantially.

------
chadlavi
This is maybe the most relevant threat to the macbook pro product line I've
seen in a while. Seems like I could do everything I need on an iPad with this,
without Apple having to give me access to a shell in iOS.

------
ianwalter
I was just looking in to setting up "VS Code in the browser" with gitpod,
code-server, and Visual Studio Codespaces last weekend. Gitpod looked nice but
the fact that you can only customize the editor per-repository doesn't make
sense to me. Looks like GitHub has solved this by using a `dotfiles` repo.
code-server looked decent but I would much rather auth / secure the editor
through GitHub. I tried to use Visual Studio Codespaces but I find Microsoft's
account system and Azure's interface so infuriating. I'm really looking
forward to this!

~~~
jankeromnes
> Gitpod looked nice but the fact that you can only customize the editor per-
> repository doesn't make sense to me.

Gitpod also has user-specific Preferences, and even user-specific VS Code
extensions. (Usually customization places have a "Workspace" tab and a "User"
tab.)

~~~
ianwalter
I just added my user settings and my custom theme via .vsix and everything
seems to have worked fine. Not sure how I missed this, thanks Jan!

~~~
jankeromnes
Hey, that's awesome! Thanks for the update.

------
albertzeyer
I still wish that PyCharm has some better remote development support...
Basically this feature request:
[https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-226455](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-226455)

The VS Code remote development is already much better now, and only seems to
get improved and extended more and more.

And then, going further, some online web version of PyCharm...

~~~
z3t4
You can run any Linux/X11 app remote.

    
    
        ssh -X
    

Then start the GUI app on the remote machine and you will see it locally,

------
celeritascelery
I am surprised this is not using atom. After all I that that was developed by
the GitHub team. But I guess since Microsoft owns them VScode comes first.

~~~
buzzerbetrayed
VScode is lightyears ahead of Atom in nearly every way. It would make no sense
to choose Atom over VScode for something like this.

------
jonny383
Wasn't one of the primary reasons for the creation of git to be
"decentralized, offline"?

This is counterintuative to that.

Call me paranoid, but you'd have to be a madman to

    
    
        * Store all of your source code with Microsoft (GitHub / npm)
        * Now start authoring all of your said source code online with yet another Microsoft product
    

That's a stupidly huge amount of trust to put into Microsoft.

~~~
caymanjim
Don't conflate Git with GitHub. Git is decentralized and always will be, and
you're free to use Git however and wherever you'd like. GitHub is a
collaborative code repository with social features, and the ability to edit
code in place is an interesting evolution. The fact that GitHub happens to use
Git is incidental. The entire product would be a useful and viable venture
even if it were backed by CVS or Mercurial or Perforce. Git just happened to
be the best choice when they started.

------
atarian
This is a really good idea, however I think it's somewhat marred by the
pricing structure: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/visual-
stu...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/visual-studio-
online/)

There should be a free tier as well as monthly options.

------
clktmr
I can see why this is interesting from a project manager's perspective. But
why would I as a developer want this, let alone pay for it? Isn't this the
"developing in a browser" nightmare everybody was joking about a few years
ago?

Maybe this will work for developing web applications which are executed on a
remote machine by design, but everything else?

------
ethanpil
I see this as a major competition to Repl.it they have had GitHub integration
for some time, but it's clunky in my opinion...

------
_bxg1
Products like this have existed in various forms for a few years now, but this
is poised to set a new bar. I wonder at what point a significant number of
companies will start issuing their developers lightweight laptops and just
having them use a web-based environment for everything. It seems almost
inevitable (at least, when developing applications that are sufficiently
abstracted from the underlying system).

Edit: it also occurs to me that this could be Microsoft's big end-game from
all of their recent dev-focused work and acquisitions (VSCode, NPM, GitHub,
TypeScript, WSL, etc.). If they create a world where a significant fraction of
developers who currently buy their dev environments from Apple start renting
them from MS instead, that's a huge deal. And of course there's lots of
potential for synergy with Azure on top of that.

------
laurentdc
Small bug in the signup page, if you select and then deselect "Other", it
still stores the selected state and doesn't let you send the form [0]

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/tNAzrFw.png](https://i.imgur.com/tNAzrFw.png)

------
Sosh101
Is anyone else imagining a dystopian future where employers force you to use
online code editors?

------
ryan-allen
I am so excited about this. I've been using code-server [0] for a while now,
because Visual Studio Online was not fast enough in Australia for me to use.

I have a VPS that runs code-server and I use 'save as app' in Edge so that it
captures control keys properly. It feels like it's native and using ssh
tunnels it feels 99% native, and I can pick back up working on any computer.

I ended up with this set up because I have a Galaxy Book S and VS Code doesn't
have an ARM build. Very excited!

[0] [https://github.com/cdr/code-server](https://github.com/cdr/code-server)

------
scruffups
Very nice and much needed.

What worries me is the consolidation of great resources in the hands of one
party. We know from our collective experience since forever that concentration
of any resource does not give us resilience.

Your thoughts?

------
dijit
Oh, WOW! I was looking for something just like this recently.

I tried setting up Theia ([https://theia-ide.org](https://theia-ide.org)) on
windows and it was definitely not ready for major use.

I didn't find anything else that fit the bill either, I hear something like
this exists internally at google though.

I'm not typically a huge fan of Github (I'm sure that's a controversial
opinion) but this is definitely something I'm going to check out.

~~~
jankeromnes
You've probably seen [https://gitpod.io](https://gitpod.io) then, which is
kind of a hosted Theia that seems to work well in any browser/OS/device?

~~~
dijit
I was looking (at the time) for something that would allow me to develop
windows applications from a Linux machine.

Sadly I'm still falling short. :<

------
janee
So how would the actual running of the code work?

I haven't used GitHub in some time (using gitlab), so just wondering what are
they using to run this stuff... because you'll probably need a fullyfleged
container service with secret management and whatnot. Does GitHub already
provide this?

Also I'm guessing the editor won't be using the same file system as the
launched code, i.e. would hot reload be possible or do you have to commit and
redeploy

Anyone have any ideas/speculations?

------
yuz
There is an amazing free alternative: [https://goitpod.io](https://goitpod.io)

You simply prefix your GitHub (or gitlab) url with "gitpod.io/{your-repo} and
you are instantly redirected to VM with with your repo cloned and ready to
use, a fully customizable dev environment, vscode, extensions, machine is
public on the internet so you can "npm start" and actually start serving your
site.

~~~
tommica
Fixed link: [https://gitpod.io/](https://gitpod.io/)

------
kanishkdudeja
This will probably affect sales of beefier Macs too. Why do you need a beefy
machine when all compilation / intelligence is streamed from the cloud?

~~~
slig
That doesn't solve the problem of having to deal with Windows 10 or a laptop
running Linux.

------
wishinghand
I develop front ends for Laravel apps. The database is also on my desktop.
With this would I need to host the database on its own server or can the
Codespace also handle running a DB? Mainly asking because I only use laptops
for co-working and meetups. Would love to ditch buying them and just use the
iPad Pro that I have. Not sure how to handle the database if I'm on an iPad.

------
luizfelberti
This is great news! I've been doing a similar setup to this for years with
Jupyter Notebooks.

However, if I get to make a teeny tiny feature request (Nat, if you're out
there...) it would be about this:

> _What if I don’t want to develop in a browser?_

> If you prefer, you can open a codespace in GitHub and then connect to it in
> VS Code.

I really kinda wish I could do the oposite, kinda like how Google Drive's
Colaboratory (essentially Jupyter Notebooks on Drive[0]) do: I would launch a
CodeSpace on GitHub, and it would handle all of the UI and automation bits,
but I would keep the "environment" hosted somewhere else (i.e. a Docker
container exposing a CodeSpace agent/headless VSCode through localhost:8080
that my browser talks to)

All of the gears seem to be already in-place for this to be possible given:

> _How is Codespaces different from VS Code?_

> Codespaces sets up a cloud-hosted, containerized, and customizable VS Code
> environment. After set up, you can connect to a codespace through the
> browser or through VS Code.

The reasons for this are several:

\- I bought a beefy computer for a reason, and want to use it. I don't want to
pay boatloads of money to Azure to have equal firepower to what I currently
have idling;

\- From an SRE perspective, your code, several times needs to be "inside" your
infrastructure to run properly (because of roles, latency, you might be
running Data Loss Prevention solutions, what have you), and this allows me to
point the CodeSpace to a dedicated instance I have running inside a VPN on my
own infrastructure;

\- There are more, but I don't want to make this too long and I'm failing to
recall some of them.

 _So to sum it up:_ I think this is a potentially great feature, as long as it
doesn't come coupled with the need to buy Azure instance time. This would (and
I'm asserting this purely from my own gut, without a shred of evidence)
probably lead to increased adoption for this feature, and as a corollary lead
to selling more Azure instance time for those who do not want the hassle,
without crippling those who actually need to keep some things "in-house".

[0] [https://colab.research.google.com](https://colab.research.google.com)

------
asiachick
I'm slightly surprised all the screenshots are based on MacOS and that
Microsoft didn't require them to look like Windows 10.

------
feniv
Is the browser editing powered by Monaco or something else entirely?
[https://github.com/microsoft/monaco-
editor](https://github.com/microsoft/monaco-editor)

Both repl.it and codesandbox.io seem to be Monaco based. This seems to have
better support for VS Code extensions than what's available in Monaco.

~~~
JoyrexJ9
It's not Monaco, which is a basic text editor, it's full VS Code (extensions,
terminal, debugging) but in the browser

------
deegles
I couldn't find any info on how much memory/vCPU these will have available or
if it's configurable, does anyone know?

~~~
JoyrexJ9
I think it's 2 cores, 4 GB RAM by default but they are planning of adding
other options I expect it'll be in line with the VS Codespaces offerings
[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/visual-
stu...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/visual-studio-
online/)

------
jchw
Oh, now things are getting interesting.

I was a big fan of the idea of GitLab IDE, but never got too deep; it seemed
like a great idea that could use more baking. But then I saw Theia and GitPod.
I like GitPod, but I just wish it had better Github integration.

Well, yeah. So... good job Github. Can’t wait to try this one out.

------
Avi-D-coder
This is great. We all knew it was coming, but I wish they hadn't axed xray.

Has vscode performance improved in recent history? Are there any plans to
replace hot code paths with Rust or wasm? Has modal editing improved? I'm not
against using vscode, but even with codespaces it's a hard sell.

~~~
steveklabnik
(vscode does use ripgrep to power part of their search)

------
suchitpuri
Isnt this what google cloud shell + editor [1] already does ?

[1][https://medium.com/google-cloud/developing-on-gcp-getting-
st...](https://medium.com/google-cloud/developing-on-gcp-getting-started-with-
cloud-shell-editor-e074f2fa49d9)

------
bigbossman
Amazing, this finally turns the iPad into a legit remote dev machine. No need
to setup a DO VPC either.

------
zaksoup
Will this support Teletype style multi-cursor collaboration? I'm very excited
about this for easy dev environment setup but if it had easy collaboration it
would be immediately adoptable at my org for pair programming while we're all
pandemic-remote.

------
downerending
Argh--does anyone understand what this is supposed to be? (beyond what GitHub
already provides)

------
pot8n
I've already been using VSCode remote over SSH on cheap yet powerful Hetzner
instances. You can do this on any cloud vendor and you can, if you want, put
your home directory as a volume and resize up and down your machine as you
want.

------
tiffanyh
Does this work on iPad?

I was under the impression this bug is blocking VSCode and other electron
based apps.

[https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=149054](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=149054)

~~~
jankeromnes
Monaco has a few rough edges on iPad, but overall it seems to work great with
[https://gitpod.io](https://gitpod.io) (same editor as VSCode).

------
revskill
It's interesting that Microsoft acknowledges the fact that their native
windows platform is really not good for a lot of developer. Linux is better.
The web is even better. Good direction they're heading to.

~~~
lucis
WSL 2 is really good: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/wsl/wsl2-install](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/wsl/wsl2-install)

------
vackosar
Once they have all the coding sessions recorded they can finally replace those
pesky devs /jk. But seriously, is there anything in the conditions about
ability to record coding sessions of say open source devs?

------
pinopinopino
Sounds good, microsoft is building some interesting tools lately. I use visual
code on the desktop for various languages, so it is a welcome to see it will
be supported online through github repositories.

------
tams
So now that the IDE is on the web, it would be pretty neat to be able to
automatically launch interactive debugging sessions when breakpoints are hit
in CI jobs.

Does any CI solution already offer something like this?

------
rkagerer
This feels like a step toward a contemporary "VB6" in the cloud.

------
gravypod
I hope this accelerates interest around web-based development environments. If
someone could pre-package a setup containing language servers for "all"
languages, a build system that is generic to all languages (bazel or bazel-
like), and internally run a small kube cluster with a wildcard DNS name
pointing to it you'd reduce ops work of setting up staging environments,
feature branch testing, development environment management, etc for most
development teams by at least 10%.

I can't wait for a monorepo-friendly staging/development environment that
works out of the box and can provide cross-language & generated code
autocompletions for "every" language.

~~~
celeritascelery
I think you severely underestimate how hard it is to do this for “all” and
“every” language. Even VSC only has first class support for a handful of top
languages. Most languages I use have barely more then a syntax highlighting
package.

------
jariel
Can someone explain how 'build' is done with the obvious targetting of
platforms and build configs etc? Does the build happen locally? On a rented
server? Serverless?

------
kart23
Wow this seems pretty sick.

Gitlab has a decent web ide, I think this may be github playing catch up, but
I'm hopeful that this competition gets us a better product on both sides.

------
sandGorgon
This is great - it basically is signalling how Microsoft is thinking about
GitHub. I think vscode is on its way to be owned by the GitHub team.

Will the same happen to Azure Devops ?

~~~
reificator
> _I think vscode is on its way to be owned by the GitHub team._

God please no, especially if anyone from Atom is involved.

I almost didn't even try vscode in the first place after atom soured me on
electron.

------
sneak
I was expecting this years ago when GitHub started work on Atom. This will be
quite useful for people who are willing to participate in the Microsoft
ecosystem.

------
desmap
OT: For those who like to have VS Code's features in an super responsive
console environment: Check out coc.vim for nvim. It's a masterpiece.

------
underdeserver
Being able to connect, do the work, run tests and everything without needing a
strong laptop sounds like a good solution for people who like to travel.

------
airstrike
> Get the _full_ Visual Studio Code experience without leaving GitHub.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that statement isn't quite
accurate.

~~~
minimaxir
It's plausible, given that VS Code is effectively a web app. (the exception in
features could be Extensions)

Not the first IDE to have full-feature parity on desktop and web.

~~~
airstrike
Not having extensions alone already means it's not the _full_ experience. How
many people run vanilla VS Code?

Can I run unit tests? Debug?

~~~
paavohtl
It does have extensions[1]. It just might not be able to run _all_ extensions.

[1] From the link: "Inside of a codespace, you’ll have access to the Visual
Studio Code Marketplace, and you can preload any extensions you want loaded at
launch using a devcontainer configuration file. You can also personalize your
codespace by pulling in dotfiles."

------
suyash
So is this another play to lock us into Azure Cloud?

------
antigirl
'How much does Codespaces cost? Codespaces is free while in beta. Plans and
pricing will be announced as the beta progresses.'

~~~
adamparsons
I think if you look at the pricing for github actions minutes, you'd gather an
extremely rough idea of what they feel is a fair price for docker hosting.
Maybe add some buffer to make the VS Code investment worth it, etc.

~~~
antigirl
Absolutely, just might not be for everyone. Installing running those modules
is gonna cost them. node_modules for create-react-app, react official boiler
plate is around 280mb

------
rurban
I have no idea about VS Code. For which languages is this good for? Javascript
I guess. What else? C, C++, Java, python or such?

------
elixanchor
This looks excellent. Can easily see this vertically integrating across Azure
to become a strong competitor to AWS + Lambda.

------
peey
Is this built on top of open source technology? Say, can I integrate it into a
gitlab instance, or host it on my own server?

~~~
jankeromnes
I don't think VS/GH Codespaces are open-source, and they don't seem to support
GitLab.

However, if you do need something based on open-source that works with GitLab,
take a look at [https://www.gitpod.io](https://www.gitpod.io)

You can even self-host it: [https://www.gitpod.io/blog/gitpod-self-
hosted-0.4.0/](https://www.gitpod.io/blog/gitpod-self-hosted-0.4.0/)

------
xiphias2
This is great, I can't help but feel like the whole point of rewriting a part
of VS in JS was to get to this stage.

------
ohmyblock
Is this a new main competitor to AWS Cloud9?

------
eating555
So seems like GitHub is in the shape of VS Code now. Good job Microsoft. Atom
is not your child anymore.

------
xyst
This looks nice to show off code and do 1-2 line fixes.

Don’t think I would write a full app or module in this though.

------
RMPR
I wonder if it will be possible to install extensions, I want my Vim
keybindings!

------
tannhaeuser
Isn't that antithetical to the entire idea of git _and_ of Microsoft?

------
tango12
This is going to be amazingly useful.

It's also some pretty serious vertical integration for Github/Microsoft!

IDE: Github Source control + collaboration: Github CI/CD: Github Hosting:
Github + Azure (with docker and azure functions that experience is pretty much
already there technically?)

------
jpsim
Is there a list of supported languages or environments for this yet?

------
leoncvlt
So how would this differ from CodeSandbox or StackBlitz?

------
yrio
I wonder what they use on the backend. Is it .NET Core?

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Jemm
Can you compile, run and test your code online as well?

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iddan
The more Microsoft move from Azure to GitHub the better

~~~
AaronFriel
Where do you think these VMs are hosted? :)

I hope they allow BYO-remote backend for compliance reasons. This feature
seems amazing but I cannot use it.

~~~
filmgirlcw
We do!

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/online/how-
to/...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/online/how-to/self-
hosting-vscode)

(I work on Azure but not on this product)

~~~
AaronFriel
I'm aware of the product, I'd like to know if there plans to integrate these
two offerings (e.g.: click on GitHub CodeSpace and connect to my _personal_
remote server as opposed to one on Azure) and if there will be any better
approaches for IT/Ops security focused folks to configure these en masse. The
current approach is untenable, each user has to log in and set up a VS Remote
environment individually, personally, and if I'm rolling this out to a team
that's just not an option.

~~~
filmgirlcw
Thanks for the feedback, I’ll send it to that team!

------
vira28
GitHub vs Gitlab best thing for this decade.

------
filter-coffee
Interesting to see VScode in github. Slowly integrating Microsoft’s feature. I
think we can soon expect something like Create a MS PowerPoint from code
comments

------
blondin
nice! thought about an environment like that. would be great to have python,
golang and c/cpp runtimes.

------
boramalper
Final nail in the coffin of Atom, adieu.

------
cryptonector
As long as I can get vim keybindings...

------
ThouYS
Dear Diary, today I saw the future

------
victoray
MSFT loves devs :)

------
Spicli89
#20880

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ltbarcly3
So much Github marketing spam today, maybe the admins should look into whether
they are sending out coordinated upvote instructions to employees?

------
PedroBatista
Github is getting Microsofted, there were some good things about this in the
recent past, but I wonder...

~~~
_pmf_
Two years, tops, then it'll be unusable.

~~~
marceloabsousa
I tend to agree, it's quite crazy what they are trying to pull off
technically. It's hard to imagine how all these features will not impact the
service. Also it's probably just bleeding money... millions of dollars on
CodeScan alone.

------
greatgib
Typical Microsoft strategy: Embrace, extend and extinguish

Soon the Platform will be renamed 'Microsost Visual Studio Github' or
'Microsoft team Github'. Then 'microsoft Visual studio hub'.

Then at somme point, Github will be inside Visual studio code online and not
anymore the other way around!

~~~
nojito
What?

This is just them creating a one stop shop for developers by expanding what
GitHub offers.

Nothing to do with EEE

~~~
greatgib
Just think! You have Github. Git coming from linux, open source World, ...
Also Github is notoriously the base of a lot of the ecosystem that is
deprecating Microsoft solutions and environnement. All the website and js
things of today are all developped by and for the unix world(linux, mac,..).
In ms World, you were supposed to use proprietary closed heavy corporate
solutions : c sharp, j2e, closed 'pro' server solutions.

Si Github was the corner of all of that. Then they but it, suddenly there are
a lot of features coming that bring it far from the scm job it was meant to.
Now, it starts to be 'integrated' with ms tool ecosystem. How long before your
Github accounts are merged, shared, replace with a Microsoft account?

They will tell you that it makes sense and is needed because vscode needs to
be interconnected with ms team and co...

~~~
nojito
You seem to have closed your eyes for the MS of the past 10 years.

The 90s are over.

------
wackget
Great, but Github doesn't even support sorting your repositories into folders
and is ignoring years-old requests to change that: [https://github.com/dear-
github/dear-github/issues/74](https://github.com/dear-github/dear-
github/issues/74)

Gitlab does.

~~~
mylons
Neat, use gitlab then. Get over your tribalism and use the right tool for the
job.

------
diggan
So GitHub (Microsoft) continues to venture way beyond just source control and
it's directly related areas, into a much more overall "development" strategy,
seemingly echoing what GitLab have been doing for a while.

It's sad to see GitHub moving slowly into spreading itself too thin, instead
of just improving the platform they have. They now try to replace CI services,
donation platforms and now remote code editors.

Seems their core service is still holding up so far, but with all these moves
in different directions, I'm getting a bit worried that the SCM and software
collaboration part will be left out. I think GitHub becoming SourceForgeV2 is
closer than people think. It's bound to happen at one point.

~~~
tomnipotent
> It's sad to see GitHub moving slowly into spreading itself too thin

People have been saying this every time GitHub has added a feature that wasn't
SCM. How is this time any different?

> I think GitHub becoming SourceForgeV2 is closer than people think. It's
> bound to happen at one point.

How do you possibly jump from Codespaces to SourceForgeV2, and somehow
proclaim it as certainty?

~~~
simplify
Since when is saying "I think" considered to "proclaim as certainty"?

~~~
tomnipotent
It's literally in the quote: "It's bound to happen at one point."

