What if your dev experience was entirely in the cloud?

These days, launching applications means navigating an endless sea of complexity. We felt this pain at Google, so we started Project IDX, an experimental new initiative aimed at bringing your entire full-stack, multiplatform app development workflow to the cloud.

Project IDX gets you into your dev workflow in no time, backed by the security and scalability of Google Cloud.

Project IDX lets you preview your full-stack, multiplatform apps as your users would see them, with upcoming support for built-in multi-browser web previews, Android emulators, and iOS simulators.

As a Vim fanatic, I can’t say I’ll ever feel comfortable working in a browser, but some parts of IDX seem interesting. I wonder what the implications are for proprietary code.

I do think it solves an interesting problem where you’re working on your desktop and decide to move to your laptop and continue working on the same codebase, but don’t want to commit early so you can pull down the changes to your laptop.

It reminds me vaguely of Shells.

  • @[email protected]
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    7711 months ago

    Hell no, no way I’d trust Google with my code. Personal or otherwise. Let me guess this would work only in Chrome.

    • @Hector_McG
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      11 months ago

      All your codebase are belong to us.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      1111 months ago

      Hell no, no way I’d trust Google with my code. Personal or otherwise.

      Ditto. But at the risk of playing devil’s advocate, if you were writing free software code you were going to stick on a code forge somewhere anyway, would you still be against it?

      Are there Google services that only work in Chrome? I don’t use any of them, so I don’t know. I do know Google is generally less annoying than Microsoft in that department.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        Are there Google services that only work in Chrome?

        this is the gateway to this

        I do know Google is generally less annoying than Microsoft in that department.

        how this? through Firefox I experience ms websites the same as with edge. google websites? experience is full of small differences from chrome

        Edit:formatting

        • @[email protected]OP
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          411 months ago

          how this? through Firefox I experience ms websites the same as with edge. google websites? experience is full of small differences from chrome

          Firefox is my main browser. In my experience, Microsoft services don’t work at all on Firefox. I can’t say I use much of either company’s services, but Google tends to be more lax in some departments. For example, the Google Pixel is the only Android device that allows you to securely unlock the bootloader and install another operating system on it, rather than forcing you to root the device.

          I’m not a fan of either company, but I get the impression Google is less actively hostile toward their customers than Microsoft. For the most part.

          • @[email protected]
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            011 months ago

            i work for a company that produces dotnet software. I’m my comments you’ll find this, and that firefox is my browser of choice. so we obviously manage access via ad, we use azure, etc. . when it comes to develop Linux native code, i fire up my vm, and I can even use the teams web version on firefox (tbh, only chat though) , so

            In my experience, Microsoft services don’t work at all on Firefox

            i don’t really know where this is coming from. would you like to elaborate?

            the idea that ms is hostile towards its customers is so apple propaganda from some 20 years ago… I mean, a very old refrain… just please stop beating this now decomposed horse. had u written something like

            ms like apple like google/alphabet are private ruthless faceless us corporations, ready to suck the soul of anything that got one

            that, i could agree on. anyways, peace, obviously.

            • @[email protected]OP
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              11 months ago

              i don’t really know where this is coming from. would you like to elaborate?

              As I said, I don’t deal with a lot of Microsoft or Google services, though I do run my email through Microsoft Exchange. It took me roughly three hours to figure out how to download the Microsoft Office executable from the Microsoft website. I tried everything on Firefox, Brave, Chrome, even on my Mac. In the end, I needed Microsoft Edge to get it. I don’t remember the exact details because this was 2 or so years ago, but requiring a particular version of a Blink-based browser just to download Microsoft Office seems…unnecessary.

              I remember needing to use Brave for Microsoft Teams, but I could be remembering wrong. When I think of Microsoft being actively hostile toward their customers, I think of about ten years ago when Microsoft tried to prevent Xbox owners from sharing physical disk games with the Xbox One, essentially killing preowned games (not that they went through with it). Of course, Apple is an easier target than Microsoft for customer-hostile behavior. Frankly, these megacorporations all blend together for me.

              I don’t have any particular feelings about Microsoft, and after using Windows for 20 years, I don’t have any major complaints with it (from memory; it’s been a while), aside from the obvious. If there’s any particular corporation I despise, that would have to be Amazon.

              • @[email protected]
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                111 months ago

                on mac i can’t honestly argue about anything. apple policies, practices, hw, sw, services, etc. are something i try to stay as far away as possible. dunno if it’s still the same, but as an example VLC on mac was practically nothing and broken compared to linux and win version, because, you know, quicktime (or what it was/is called the native media player). also is it possible that mac makes really hard to access ms services (or that ms makes really hard to access their services on a mac? although they already make sw for that os… mmh…)? anyways, just for completeness, on win I had no trouble managing office (again, don’t recall what that iteration was called, but it was the one that allowed you to install office in 5 machines with one license) with firefox. have a nice day

                • @[email protected]OP
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                  211 months ago

                  I use mpv on macOS and haven’t had any trouble to speak of. But you might have installed VLC from the App Store, which is a common mistake—unless you’re installing Apple’s own software, you probably shouldn’t use the App Store. It usually only carries inferior versions of the software to comply with Apple’s terms, haha.

                  I very rarely use Microsoft Office nowadays, but once it’s installed, it’s (mostly) fine? I’ve heard from a coworker that there are some significant missing features in some software in that suite. I just remember struggling to find the page to download the Setup.exe file. I went to the exact same page in Microsoft Edge and a download button that wasn’t there in any other browser suddenly appeared! Maddening! This was a 5 or 10-license verison, I think.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    111 months ago

                    well the first part is super interesting…common mistake installing from official store non brand apps!? that’s something on the line with win store. if I’m told I’d die if I do not install Inkscape through win store, well, you know, I’d either stop looking at the insides of a svg or die. not so tough of a decision ah ah

        • @[email protected]
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          411 months ago

          Microsoft don’t allow Bing chat to run in anything but Edge. I don’t know if there are others, but that’s the one I’ve noticed recently.

          • @[email protected]
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            211 months ago

            true, but bing chat isn’t all ms services. although I’ve heard of plug-ins that could do that, dreadful as it is just the idea