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by yaseer 952 days ago
When you setup your editor and container system to work on a remote dev environment, I've generally found this superior to coding locally - with a few edge-case exceptions.

You can't code when offline. But I generally find it difficult to code without internet access these days anyway, and the scenarios without internet access are now vanishingly small. Internet access whilst flying, is becoming standard, and only likely to improve.

The advantages are numerous. Firstly, the ability to work from even the most basic machine, anywhere with internet, is liberating. I can be perfectly productive with only my tablet whilst travelling.

Secondly, keeping a consistent and controlled environment that you never have to maintain or worry about breaking due to a system update, or move to new hardware.

If you use multiple devices(e.g. Desktop, Laptop, Tablet), or perhaps have personal and business machines, not having to repeat a setup and update process is extremely convenient. As is not having to worry about your hardware - I can code from any machine capable of running a text-editor, SSH and a web-browser.

The key thing here is the development flow needs to be extremely convenient for the developer - no frustrating processes interrupting your code-debug loops.

But when it's executed with convenience in mind, I've found it superior in every case, and in a future filled with ubiquitous internet, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes the norm.

1 comments

... Nah, screw network dependency.

Local or bust.

Given the shitty Orwellian potential of technology though, I wouldn't be surprised we end up steaming OSes from cloud on mobile dumb terminals. But that's shitty.

> Given the shitty Orwellian potential of technology though, I wouldn't be surprised we end up steaming OSes from cloud on mobile dumb terminals. But that's shitty.

I've been doing this for years with my tablet. The tablet honestly becomes 'less dumb' in the process though.

I agree some stuff moves towards this Orwellian centralisation of power - I use Geforce Now for games + Amazon Workspaces for work.

But I've also run VNC on servers I own myself for side-projects- you can own the dumb client and smart server if you need to.