Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by teeray 620 days ago
> the idea of cloud-based development environments where, if something breaks, a developer can click a button on a website, wait a few minutes and have a fresh working environment ready to go again.

Until the cloud development environment inevitably breaks, and your entire development team’s productivity drops to zero.
2 comments
simonw 620 days ago
Right, but you can have a dedicated team working on preventing that from happening - including robust automated tests that exercise the cloud development environment itself, checking that newly launched environments come up and work as they should.

I assert that such a team will be a lot more productive than the exact same sized team dedicated to local development support instead.

link
pydry 620 days ago
This can and does happen with local environments too.

Ideally both options would be available using a wrapper that ensures consistency across CI, cloud dev and laptop dev environments but I havent had that luxury anywhere.

link
teeray 620 days ago
> This can and does happen with local environments too.

Absolutely—but when it does, it’s not evenly distributed. Some of your team can remain productive. Some can pair up. On the other hand, when the cloud development environment goes down, you always send your dev team home for the day.

link