1 yr. ago • 88%

Google Launches Project IDX, A web-based IDE

Project IDX is an entirely web-based workspace for full-stack application development, complete with the latest generative AI (powered by Codey and PaLM 2), and full-fidelity app previews, powered by cloud emulators.

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.

TechNews @radiation.party [HN] Project IDX

Hacker News @derp.foo Project IDX

94 comments

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

77
- All your codebase are belong to us.
  
  22
- 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.
  
  11
  
  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
  
  4
What if your dev experience was entirely in the cloud?

What if your dev environment could disappear completely one day when we get bored of maintaining it after it doesn't immediately displace github?

66
- That would be annoying.
  
  4
- this
  
  3
What if your dev experience was entirely in the cloud?

No. Just no.

Fuck no.

63
Cringe. Not everything needs to be offloaded to someone else's computer.

And frankly, why would I pay some sort of fee (which they will eventually charge, even if they don't right now) for the "privilege" of having rustc fight for execution time on a vCPU somewhere in California?

Every day that passes I lean further towards pursuing a career in embedded.

51
- It’s s toss-up as to whether they start to charge for it, or whether they ditch it after a couple of years, like they have done with so many other side-projects.
  
  27
These days, launching applications means navigating an endless sea of complexity.

Meta + D

"vsco"

Enter

Damn, I'm exhausted, why does launching an application have to be so hard?
46
- CTRL + T terminal opens
  
  13
- Meta+e .. emacsclient pops up instantly
  
  10
- Hey, there's always double-clicking the icon too. Now that is exhausting.
  
  9
- ctrl + t
  
  nvim
  
  calls ambulance
  
  4
- I imagine they mean launching in more of a release sense (IE: Announcing the launch of new app XYZ). I sure hope so, anyways.
  
  3
  
  Probably, I don't really know how a web IDE would make it any easier but perhaps that's because of a lack of personal experience.
  
  2
Even if it's very cool, the problem I have with newer google products is that they might just kill it at any time, even if it's successful.

40
- Basically if it brings them enough data it stays, otherwise, it dies. Look at Google domains.
  
  1
I don't see how this could be positive for any Software developer in the long run. I totally see how this could be positive for CEO/CTO, Project Managers, in the long run, and I see a few short term advantages for Software developers.

Let's be clear, I saw that coming since Microsoft bought Github, and I am scared by the direction this is taking. The end goal is to move more and more control and power to non-software people about Software development.

By forcing every developer to not use their own tools this will have a lot of advantage for CEO/CTOs but this is terrible for software developers:

telemetry: they will try to find a formula to assess who are the best performer in a team. And as with SEO, any formula could be gamed, the best at this game, will not be the best software developers, but the one that will learn how to cheat.

global team tooling enforcement: vim vs emacs etc... ? Forget about it, the only way to work on a project will be via this unique allowed editor.

assets protection: impossible to download the code on your local computer to use external tools on it. The only way to have analysis tools will be via these "allowed" analysis tools. This will make code analysis and experimentation a lot more difficult.

Locked by promoting vendor-specific applications. As you will focus to make your code/app/product work only for Google Cloud for example, you will naturally use Google-Cloud-only features that will make your code difficult (or impossible) to move to another Cloud provider, or god-forbid, host your product on a non-cloud or private made cloud.

And I can think of other possible drawbacks but my comment is already long enough.
34
- I mean, 2 and 4 have been true already for quite some time in my experience.
  
  1
So, like 18 months before this gets added to the Google graveyard?

31
- We really should start a community specifically for bets on when a newly launched Google project will be shut down.
  
  3
I have a simple method for deciding whether or not to use something.

Is it a “cloud service”?

Is it made by google?

If either of these is a yes, I look for something else
31
- This is a good method. I love technology, but tech companies have become increasingly icky. Trends over the last decade have finally soured me on Google. I just can't justify using or buying their services.
  
  1
No.

27
- Aren't we past that point?
  
  VS Code is Electron based and it can even be deployed in the cloud. We are talking about one of the most popular IDEs.
  
  6
  
  You are talking about transmitting every bit of code you write to the internet. Go ahead if you want that, I don't
  
  11
  
  Is it good technically though? Or is it just really popular because it's so well maintained and extensible?
  
  I think the main reason vscode is so popular is, because there aren't really good native alternatives (e.g. I wouldn't compare e.g. vim because it's kind of a different target audience).
  
  So maybe something like zed or so will take the reign of this class of editors, but we'll see, I just hope it's not yet another electron or DOM based editor, DOM is bad enough in the web already...
  
  2
Google probably want that sweet, sweet development stages of the code, every interaction at debugging, documentation editing, everything, to train their AI.

26
You know they'll be saving every line of code and analyzing it and feeding it into their ML models.

Fuck that. Anything I do is staying right here with me unless it's something I choose to share on GitHub.

24
"Hey you guys, come and use our totally free online thing. We promise we won't use anything you do for our own gains! Pinky swear!"

23
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.

You can just push the changes to a different branch and then merge it to your normal feature branch later. Takes like 5 seconds.

23
- Exactly. And if you you're worried about dirtying your commit history with an unfinished commit, just rebase it out later.
  
  6
- but don’t want to commit early so you can pull down the changes to your laptop.
  
  Someone needs to tell this man about rebasing.
  
  5
  
  I rebase! I just don't want to push to the main repo, pull it down, rebase and force push to it. Pushing to a disposable branch is an obvious solution I didn't see, haha. I tend to not use branching a lot in my projects...
  
  ...I guess I could actually set up my desktop as a remote too, huh.
  
  1
- Huh, fair enough. I guess I'm still not using git to its full potential. What I do now is SSH into my desktop from my laptop and work on it there. It's easy because I use Neovim.
  
  2
- Or just use vscode remoting.
  
  2
This is wrong on so many levels, I cannot fathom where I could start talking about it.

private us company

feeding their ai just to eventually negate myself the chance of those small side projects that pay small money

us company

chromium browsers

governments shouldn't allow for source code, as trivial as it may be, to be centralized in another nation

us corporation

google (in my experience) devastating ux, ui, docs

go and try to use aws, azure, you name it services (this ip/fqdm doesn't seem to be part of google services! would you like to try out or service? start with our free plan with the performance of a C64, and choose to upgrade whenever you want!)

us based private corp

chromium browsers

this functionality is now deprecated (rewrite all of your f**** code, you absolute dumbass...) Ugh...
23
Cloud is a plague.

21
Mmh. Don't like that

21
Permanently Deleted

20
- A good manager knows that an employee is productive whenever they're comfortable. With that said, I agree. This is an excuse for upper management and C-suite executives to make employee-hostile policies.
  
  Instead of buying developers a powerful workstation and letting them do install their own software and create workflows that they’re comfortable with, they can be handed a Chromebook and told to start producing code like the code monkey they're seen as.
  
  The "benefits" will be touted as:
  
  Cheaper hardware costs.
  Developers don't need a powerful machine to run tooling or compile software, and cloud IDEs and build servers are pay-as-used. The reasoning would be: paying $300 for a Chromebook and $25 monthly is cheaper than $1200 for a new machine every few years.
  
  Reduced support burden.
  If developers don't need to install their own software, they won't need to submit requests to IT.
  
  Infrastructure security.
  Less software is less surface area. Since all the developer's software is hosted in the cloud, their computers don't need to run anything but a VPN, web browser, and restricted user permissions.
  
  "Productivity"
  Browsing Lemmy on company time? Not anymore! Your development machines are distraction-free, and we made sure of that with our root CA and enterprise policy settings.
  
  9
  
  I don't see how the last point changes anything compared to the current situation
  
  3
Things have been headed this way for a loooong time. That said, unless I can self-host something like this, I'm not interested.

19
I might be open to the idea, but it would need to be a trustworthy company that doesn't cancel stuff left and right. An ide would be too annoying to switch constantly to take this risk.

17
Permanently Deleted

15
- As if Google hasn't scraped open GitHub projects for longer than Microsoft has owned GitHub.
  
  3
The sad truth is that people are stupid enough to use this.

15
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.

12
- What's bad about committing early? Do people not know about --amend?
  
  4
  
  There is no such thing as committing early.
  
  3
  
  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 🙂
  
  2
- Well, it's what I use with Neovim, but not everyone uses a terminal-based editor. But other users had some other suggestions too: https://lemmy.comfysnug.space/comment/620209
  
  3
  
  Fortunately for me, VSCode has support for running the backend remotely via SSH.
  
  5
- 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.
  
  2
  
  Thanks for sharing about Parsec, it looks interesting. How is the speed? They talk about it being fast but is it?
  
  1
If I'm not able to self-host it a la VS Codium, then it's very much a honeypot.

12
- Like for stealing your code?
  
  Also vscodium vs vscode-server. What's the difference? I've heard the ladder has Spyware or something?
  
  4
  
  *Telemetry
  
  1
We don't need everything in the cloud or in a browser

10
Yummy yummy give me your codei !!

10
This is a play against VSCode and the developer moat MS/GitHub have built right? In which case, go at it I guess.

The Shell -> Mainframe style IDE has been coming for a while. And makes some sense, however much of a local app person you are. I’m kinda surprised Google hadn’t made a move yet. On which, it’s suspicious that this is probably driven or associated with AI.

7
- VS Code also supports the devcontainter format, where you can get a well-defined fully configured dev environments locally or remotely. It also automatically asks whether you want to use them if the project has a devcontainer.json file.
  
  So you can get the benefit of a standardized environment without going all-in on cloud.
  
  https://containers.dev/
  
  https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/devcontainers/containers
  
  14
  
  This is quite interesting. Is the devcontainer spec tightly coupled to VS Code, or is it something that other IDEs do/can support?
  
  Well, to be honest, I have a Docker Compose setup I use with Neovim anyway so I don't know what the benefits are of devcontainer compared to that.
  
  2
- On which, it’s suspicious that this is probably driven or associated with AI.
  
  The landing page mentions this:
  
  Code faster with generative AI
  
  Work quickly and efficiently with AI assistance from Google built-in, including code generation, code completion, translating code between programming languages, explaining code, and more, all powered by Codey, a foundational AI model trained on code and built on PaLM 2.
  
  I left it out of the main post because I um, didn't think it was particularly newsworthy.
  
  6
So cancer + a different form of cancer = ...?

I really don't get why you want an editor to be based on DOM, it feels just like sluggish ... cancer...

4
Eclipse che has missed the train by tying itself to red hat.

2
I'm avoiding google as much as I can, so this definitely isn't for me. But, does anyone knows of any self-hosted similar solution? I'm already mostly working remotely on my desktop through Parsec, but having something like a FOSS web IDE running at home would be a little bit better solution for cases where the network speed/quality isn't good enough to work for the whole streamed desktop case.

1
- There's versions of VSCode you can run as a web app, including support for the terminal. You just need to roll your own build/run stuff.
  
  1
  
  That sounds cool, thanks! Apparently, you can do the same with JetBrains Rider, which would also be great. I have to check that out.
  
  1

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