Microsoft sponsored - GitHub today had it's annual event: GitHub satellite where they announced how they are making GitHub more accessible and secure than before. But one new announcement which took everyone by storm was the announcement of GitHub codespaces.
As you can see clearly from the above picture, it's the same VSCode which we all use on a daily basis but instead on browser which is containerized in GitHub thus opening a completely new paradigm on how and what resources we use to code today.
Codespaces sets up a cloud-hosted, containerized, and customizable VS Code environment.
A codespace includes everything you need to develop for a specific repository, including a text editor with syntax highlighting and autocomplete, a terminal, debugging tools, and Git commands, all within GitHub. You can also install Visual Studio Code extensions in your codespace to add more functionality.
These codespaces allows you to develop in the cloud taking advantage of Microsoft's Azure cloud instead of locally. Developers can contribute from anywhere, on any machine, including tablets or Chromebooks, and there is no need to maintain local copies of intellectual property.
Your codespace will install all extensions and settings directly if you have a "dotfile" repository present in your GitHub account and will automatically detect it. Currently this container will be 2 vCPUs along with 4 GB RAM but in future this configuration will be customizable according to one's need.
What are my views on this?
Well there are many problems we developers face in setting up a dev environment many at times ending up in setup errors which can take hours to fix. But with a containerized VS Code environment which will take dependencies right from my repository and within a minute, I am ready with a dev environment.
This way I can spend more time on actual coding rather than setting up the environment.
I believe that this will be popularly adopted by companies because it will be cheaper and faster for companies to buy VS Code containers rather than spending on expensive powerful laptops for employees. Also another advantage would be that this online version would mean my development now has no boundaries and we can code using any device that has an internet connection and a browser.
Personally, I am pretty much excited to try this. Currently it is available in beta and you can signup from- https://github.com/features/codespaces/signup
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