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Comment by ThePhysicist | Hacker News Reader

I think Microsofts' long-term plan is to get most developers to use cloud-based coding environments, which is not unlikely given that software stacks become more complex to the point where setting up a local development environment is really hard. Once they achieve that they're in a very good position to sell their own cloud services by making the integration into the development workflow really smooth.

So their acquisition of Github and the large effort invested in VSCode as well as privileging their own software stack over competing solutions makes perfect sense, business wise. It probably won't be good for free software though.

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It's not just services. The most important parts of VSCode are not free software. WSL is designed to make free software users and developers comfortable on a proprietary OS.

Microsoft is also one of the biggest gaming companies in the world (via the xbox platform) and zero initiative on free software anything over there.

Microsoft doesn't care at all about free software, or software freedoms. It's just a means to an end.

I think this is all true. So we should be careful in the sense of not being vendor locked-in.

That said, this is also a legitimate interest. But what they did with the hot reload lately... I am not sure it is a smart move.

> The most important parts of VSCode are not free software.

What do you mean by this?

The core IDE is all open source (except some closed source telemetry).

The common example I see quoted is that the super-old, legacy, C# debugger is closed source, but as far as I know there is nothing stopping people writing an alternative debugger for C# in VS Code. Jetbrains did it for Rider.

Not sure what OP is referring to, but Microsoft has multiple Visual Studio Code extensions (e.g. Remote SSH) that are closed-source and hard-coded not to work with any self-compiled versions of Visual Studio Code.

>> The most important parts of VSCode are not free software. > What do you mean by this?

The SSH remote connection stuff, the Pylance Python LSP (you are not allowed to use it - the binary - in any other editor but VS Code, not even the OSS Codium) and some other extensions are CSS.

"""Can I load Pylance in Code – OSS? Pylance is licensed for use in Microsoft products and services only, so can only be used on official Microsoft builds of Visual Studio Code and GitHub Codespaces."""

https://github.com/microsoft/pylance-release/blob/main/FAQ.m...

The Microsoft C++ extension is also not fully open source.

While I agree that that shows MS doesn't really love open source as much as they say they do, I don't think you can really call those "The most important parts of VSCode".

For python development pylance is one of the most important parts.

Perhaps, but VSCode is used for a lot more than just python.

What's stopping you using any other LSP compatible python language server?

Is your argument that if Microsoft develop any programming tool and then allow it to be used via VS Code they must open source it?

Would you place that same requirement on other extensions? (e.g. sonarcloud)

Well there is Pyright by MS (that's what Pylance is based on) and python-language-server by MS - that one has been superseded by Pyright and is deprecated in Code.

https://github.com/microsoft/pyright https://github.com/Microsoft/python-language-server

The only(?) one not by MS is Jedi: https://github.com/pappasam/jedi-language-server

Why was this downvoted? sneak brings up good points.

Microsoft draws a lot of water in this town, Lebowski.

> It's just a means to an end.

This is the conclusion that most people don't ever reach. They assume that there is an altruistic element to things like open source within Microsoft (and other commercial organisations) and perhaps among the developers there is... giving back, helping out and all that.

But if Microsoft (or Google, FB, etc. etc) thought for one second that supporting, nurturing and building open source software and tools was affecting the bottom line negatively they'd drop it in a heartbeat: they answer to the shareholders and they only have one question - will this make more money?

It's honestly quite a PR coup MS has been able to pull off in terms of pushing this "new microsoft" message.

In general it's always foolish to attribute altruistic intent to a corporation, and MS in particular given their history.

Even if we take this as true, and they only care about making WSL and related projects as a means to the end of acquiring more users/dollars… where is the bad news?

The average ice cream shop exists to sell me ice cream, they’re not on an ideological quest to improve the craft. And I can eat their ice cream just fine, because I like ice cream.

Ask yourself this: would a public-facing ice cream shop run by Google, Microsoft or Facebook be content with just simply selling you ice cream?

Microsoft sells Windows, but they are not content with just simply selling you an OS. There's plenty of privacy violating data collection and ads in the OS.

More importantly, if they are giving away free ice cream, what do you think they expect to gain in return?

Enterprise users whose employers pay money for support and management tooling.

This isn’t really a counterpoint to what I’m saying.

Windows 10 has tons of stuff that I don’t like. But the advancements in WSL and open source are a good thing.

By all means, apply pressure to Microsoft for things that they do wrong, and for bad decisions they make. But when they’re doing a good thing, maybe the default stance shouldn’t be to speculate about ill intent. Sometimes it’s nice to just enjoy the good thing.

> where is the bad news?

The bad news come when you reach the "Extinguish" phase. [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

The most important parts of VSCode aren't even in VSCode - it's the LSP.

There's literally no dev environment I couldn't make work in a turnkey fashion on a Linux desktop via Nix. Never will be.

    git clone
    nix-shell
    # get developing

While I'm also a big fan of nix and friends, one big issue with this is that setting up databases, or in general services, with nix-shell is impossible.

That's not true. For example, in PostgREST we setup a nix-shell[1] that allows us to run tests in different PostgreSQL versions(from 9.6 to 14).

[1]: https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest/tree/main/nix#working...

You can usually script the database setup and teardown and have the test suite use the same scripts you have available in a nix-shell.

pg_tmp [1] also helps

http://eradman.com/ephemeralpg/

I'd argue Microsoft's target demographic isn't companies with a cloud native focus, its companies who are desperate to get in the cloud but encumbered by old guard ideas like enterprise software, and terrified to give the insider threats they grudgingly call employees their own Linux box that isn't wsl kneecapped by GPO.

A cloud-based coding environment doesn't really make it easier to debug your code in the cloud environment it would be executed.

A development environment and a production environment are inherently different in vast ways.

So even if your development environment is in the cloud, you still need a way to package your code and transfer to the environment similar to where it will run in production (whether it's bare metal, virtualized, container, or managed (e.g. serverless))

What the cloud providers are working on is making it easier and faster to continuously package transfer your development state to your prod environment.

But whether you're coding in a browser or locally it doesn't accelerate the deployment path.

I feel like this is exactly where Microsoft ist aiming for with VSCode, Codespaces etc:

1. Give away the Code Editor as Open source, but make important Plugins (Python Development, Live Share,...) closed source.

2. Make the life for developers easier/ more productive by integrating cloud offerings. Oh, you're starting a python project? Use our code space for development and click here to automatically deploy it to Azure, everything correctly configured. No need to deal with Ops.

3. Make $$$ with Cloud services and enterprise tooling.

Setting up a local dev env is easier than ever on Windows. WSL, tooling, the new terminal, it's all there.

It was always easy, just install vs code

Even easier than that: git bash and docker.

Just wait until you try linux

Ok, this comment had me actually laughing out loud.

That said, the situation with W10+WSL reminds me a bit of the early days around OS X when we suddenly had a consumer grade desktop Unix experience. W10+WSL is clunkier, but trending in a decent direction.

With Windows 11 turning people off because it's forcing TPM-only hardware for both developers and users in general, I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 11 marks the final exodus for developers leaving for Mac and Linux.

You seem to think that devs are even able to decide what os they use...

Most corps I worked at had a specific setup I was required to use, which was generally windows.

If a big corp wants devs to start building for Windows 11, they're going to have to replace all/most machines given TPM 2 is kind of new.

It's further down the lock-in road, and if big corps want those handcuffs, good luck to them.

Specially anything X-Windows related, pure easy. /s

I think Windows/WSL2 might just be the most user friendly Linux distribution, and this includes graphics support, if you are on Win 11.

For people like myself, that care mostly about UNIX/POSIX than Linux in particular, had Microsoft been serious about the NT POSIX subsystem, most likely Linux wouldn't have taken off as it did.

I still think macOS is the most user friendly UNIX, though.

As for WSL, I really don't care about it, I have been using VMWare with Linux distributions for about 10 years now.

I’ll disagree with you- Linux very much took off because it’s license is cost free and there was/is an influential FLOSS software philosophical movement.

Sure that is why people buy macs instead of supporting Linux OEMs, and are everywhere to be seen at FOSDEM.

Where are those philosophers?

I would like to know where would Linux be without Intel, Compaq, IBM and Oracle's money that started being pumped around 2000.

Even Wikipedia mentions it.

Tried that for decades, why do you think I'm not macOS and Windows now?

Because you not tried Haiku yet.

I started off with Windows development. Later on I developed using Windows terminal and WSL. I've also done development on Mac. Then one fine day I tried Linux. It blew my mind. What is coming to Windows now is a pale imitation of what Linux has been having for decades. Amazing terminals, terminal multiplexers, tiling window managers, keyboard driven tools, package managers...

I really regret those years lost.

Paying to digitally imprison yourself, your family and descendents for years to come is easier than ever.

It might be easier than ever, but it is far easier on Linux. It shows that people developing terminal(s) on Windows are probably not Linux users - it is little things like secondary clipboard and terminals hanging that make one want to scream.

I’m curious about the cloud-based coding you’ve mentioned. What I’ve seen so far is interesting, but not terribly compelling to use day to day. It has a place, certainly, such as education or possibly interviewing.

What about the author’s point that VSCode competes too well with visual studio, and that MS has intentionally underfunded Omnisharp, and that their own software stack continues to be poorly supported on VSCode?

The large effort in VSCode seems poorly invested if it’s used to push people to a paid product like VSCode.

Basically the https://www.gitpod.io/

That doesn't make much sense given their cloud offerings.

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