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Comment by sigmonsays | Hacker News Reader

How many developers are there who are happy using some web based IDE versus their own tools?

I'd prefer having my own dev tools maintained locally by me but i'm curious if i'm becoming the minority

I'm using a web based IDE for my dev, but I'm biased in that sense. The main advantage for me is that I can easily switch branches, as every branch has its own VM. + I can easily share in-progress work. I do use the VSCode integration, because I'm very used to VSCode.

That said, I've also spoken with people who use a Web IDE next to their local environment. E.g. they use a Web IDE for reviewing PRs or making smaller changes, and they use their local editor for feature development.

If this is just for being able to easily switch branches, have you considered using git worktrees? Essentially you have have multiple branches checked out into different directories at the same time. The key point though is that all git refs are still maintained in a single place so you are not actually having full clones for each worktree that you have.

I personally use Emacs and magit which has great support for worktrees. I do not know if the VSCode git integration supports it.

Ah right, the main advantage I have here is that the dev server also stays running when I go to another branch (since it's a different VM). So I can work on one thing, share it with the team and in the meantime continue on another branch. They can see the devserver / running code, while I am working on something else.

It's especially useful for things like migrations or dependency management. In one branch I could work on something that has some database migrations, and then I can still switch to other branches without having to roll back the migrations.

I didn't know about git worktrees though! I'm going to read up on this.

> In one branch I could work on something that has some database migrations, and then I can still switch to other branches without having to roll back the migrations.

I would love to have this workflow locally.

> I would love to have this workflow locally.

You too should check worktree. (See my other comment)

> In one branch I could work on something that has some database migrations, and then I can still switch to other branches without having to roll back the migrations.

This is a good use case of git worktree.

> I didn't know about git worktrees though! I'm going to read up on this.

Indeed, you will like it.

The only limitation is that you cannot checkout the same branch in multiple worktree.

I use it with VS Code since the project I work on takes 5-10 minutes to build if a major header is modified. It shows up as a separate directory, but VS Code will still realize that the directory is a git worktree.

The only thing kind of clunky is that you have to keep track of which branch is open in which directory since you can't checkout the same branch in two different directories.

> The only thing kind of clunky is that you have to keep track of which branch is open in which directory since you can't checkout the same branch in two different directories.

"git worktree list" is your friend ;-)

+1 - Personally not a fan of cloud IDEs - I am ok if the front-end for the tool itself is html based but run by/on a local http/websocket server. Having to maintain my entire stack on the cloud somewhere is something I still havent gotten comfortable (yes we use Github for source control somewhere and cloud for running you stuff somewhere). Then again I didnt get containers 15 years ago!

We use CodeSandbox for interviews (we have a base project that we fork for each interview). It's pretty good for watching someone code on a Zoom call (the actual pair-programming features like multiple cursors are a little buggy, but we don't need those).

I've also seen some open source projects that use CodeSandbox for their example projects. It's a nice experience for examples that require a server and client (that can't simply use storybook). I can understand the value in that, especially if you can automate it and link it to a Git repo with an examples/ folder.

I started using it while developing on a site running on nextjs. It works pretty fast and I can get things done faster. There are minor issues, of course, but in its current state it works just fine.

I like it when I want to test something out quickly so setting up a full dev environment isn't worth the effort.

I tend to prefer this way of working when I am doing a demo for my team or write the beginning of an open-source hack.

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