VSCode on Google Colab

> Hosted VSCode instances that Microsoft has on Azure and in beta on GitHub are a different thing and are not open source.

I can see it now: one day all of our engineering work will happen exclusively in the cloud and we'll all be using thin clients.

Just like smart phones, the typical desktop or laptop will become a dumb device. A Chromebook, but worse.

Subscribe to your tools, for the low monthly cost of only... And wait, there's more. You can upgrade your storage and execution time package.

Augh.

> This package just installs code-server on Google Colab, whatever that is.

I laughed way too hard at this, because I have thoughts like this bounce around my head nearly every time I read about a Google product. It reminds me of Microsoft circa ~2006, when they were doing all kinds of wacky and ill-defined projects that turned into pure bloatware.

> code-server, that takes VSCode and modifies it to run in a browser

Not only that, but it's also only the open-source parts of VSCode. Notably, you don't get access to the same extensions marketplace. Code-server does link to many open-source extensions, but certain things (e.g. Intellisense) aren't available.

The video tutorial and eventually the package was inspired by the blog post and the tweet. :) (also mentioned in the video)

I think in general you can run arbitrary code on Colab. That's the entire point. Your CPU and RAM usage are monitored and rate limited; you have to pay $$$ for more powerful specs and at that point if you're paying them I doubt they care what you're doing with what you paid for.

Why would this one specific library be banned from colab?

Too late? That's essentially what Vscode, the most popular text editor for programmers, does.

Nothing stopping you from continuing to use vim, emacs, sublime, etc though.

Browsers don't have access to local files so this isn't about editing a file on your computer.

VS Code runs on electron so it is already an editor running in a browser locally without an Internet connection required.

Try playing solitaire on windows 10 with out a internet connection.

Not just another IDE, my friend. VS Code is truly fantastic.

On colab you get free gpus.

I have just started playing with repl.it and am enjoying it. repl.it is using a similar IDE to the VSCode fork from the OP.

I am trying to build a small web app using repl.it as my dev environment and deploy on google app engine. The stack is flask/mysql/html5/bootstrap.

I have a workflow where I can commit to a dev branch inside repl.it, push to github and them merge to master. If merge is no-conflict, it uses github actions to deploy to google app engine.

There are trade offs, but I am really enjoying the ability to just start coding by opening a browser and having my full dev environment in a tab. Really fun!

repl.it has always been slow for me for anything beyond a single file with a handful of changes.

I use it for every project. I mainly code node.js and sometimes Python.

Speed has never been an issue for me; VSCode boots up in under a second and easily chews through thousands of lines of code (albeit without tokenization).

The new SSH connection mode has been a lifesaver for me - you can now sync VSCode with a server you have SSH access to, meaning you can browse/open/save files remotely, and open as many terminals as you want on the target server. This makes it super easy to e.g. test code on different hardware or view logs or edit config files and such.

I'm using it as my main editor for a Django codebase. It's not my favorite IDE, it's a bit slow too but it's the best I could find for what I do. Also I haven't found any good native IDE that can handle Python, Django, HTML, CSS and JS as well as VSCode. There are IDEs that can do Python (and Django) and others for HTML, CSS and JS but I don't want to be constantly switching between the two. If you know a good IDE that can replace VSCode for my use case please let me know.

Couple of years ago Salesforce switched from Eclipse plug-ins for development and went all in on VSCode. They have a set of plug-ins that log in to Salesforce and send configurations and code back and forth. They're even going to use "VSCode in the browser" to edit code in place in your organization.

Absolutely... directory tree view and integrated terminal are the two big killer features for me... everything else is just extra awesomeness. Support for JS projects is pretty much best in class (Though jetbrains/webstorm is decent too).

Support for other languages like go, rust, C# (.Net Core) are pretty decent. The extensions/marketplace is incredible in terms of the breadth and depth of support for almost anything you can think of. I even have an enviornment setup with a settings file defaulting to CP437, where I use SSH remote extension in code to configure a remote telnet BBS.

Beyond all of this, it's relatively quick to load and run, though there are faster editors, I haven't seen a (much) faster IDE really.

The remote ssh extension is probably the third killer feature for me. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of those three things alone. I don't use some of the other features nearly as much as I rely on the console a lot, and the integrated terminal just makes it in the box as an experience.