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.

  • @tatterdemalion
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    1211 months ago

    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.

    This has been a solved problem for decades. SSH.

      • @dmrzl
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        311 months ago

        There is no such thing as committing early.

      • @[email protected]OP
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        11 months ago

        It’s not so much committing early, but pushing early. You don’t want to push early, then rebase your commits, and then force-push to a repository other developers are using too.

        But as I’ve learned from all of the responses in this thread, there are many ways of avoiding this 🙂

      • Ethan
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        11 months ago

        Fortunately for me, VSCode has support for running the backend remotely via SSH.

    • @Mikina
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      211 months ago

      Ever since I’ve discovered Parsec (or any other remote desktop streaming solution that isn’t TeamViewer), I’ve switched from having to drag around a heavy laptop that still can barely run Unreal to just having a Surface, remotely WoL my desktop at home through a pooling solution that does not require any public facing service (my NAS is just pooling a website API for a trigger. Not efficient, but secure), and just connecting through Parsec.

      RDP could also work I’d wager, but then I’d have to set up a VPN and I’m not really that comfortable with anything public facing. But if anyone asks me now for good laptop recommendations, I always recommend going the “better desktop for the same price, and small laptop for remote”.

      I’ve yet to find a place where I couldn’t work comfortably through Parsec, it being optimized for gaming means the experience is pretty smooth, and it works pretty well even at lower network speeds. You still need at least 5-10Mbps, but if you have unlimited mobile data you’re good to go almost anywhere.

      • @sjpwarren
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        111 months ago

        Thanks for sharing about Parsec, it looks interesting. How is the speed? They talk about it being fast but is it?

        • @Mikina
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          211 months ago

          I’ve never had any issues, it’s pretty well optimized and it’s miles ahead of TeamViewer. So, in my experience, it is pretty fast - if your net can handle it. And if you have lower bandwidth then it’s pretty good at optimizing for speed instead of quality, if that’s what you want.

          • @sjpwarren
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            110 months ago

            Turns out it won’t share a Linux machine.

            • @Mikina
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              210 months ago

              Oh, you’re right, I’ve totally forgotten about that. It was one of the (many) reasons why I gave up my last attempt to finally switch away from windows and to Linux.