Dev thought process: "I can have a working clean remote Linux machine since IT imposes work impeding crapware, barely working net connection, account restrictions and OS on the laptop - it's cheap too"
This: "Dev work happens on a highly monitored and locked down Linux environment rather than a uncontrollable local laptop - we can also charge a lot becuase it's security"
It turns out that having development environments only accessible via telnet and X Windows is great from IT management point of view.
Having it on a remote VM is so much better :
- my device isn't crippled
- a lot of potential security issues are now not my problem
- environment setup is dealt with by someone else
- I can code on a potato as long as it can render the screens I need
I can have what you're describing with a standard VM instance and SSH port open (or my home desktop and cloud flare tunnel)
1) my device isn't crippled
WHY would you assume they're not going to cripple your device? In the past they made it worse. One product that had exactly this purpose was "Sun Ray" machines. They weren't just crippled in software, they were utterly crippled in hardware. You see the problem with crippled hardware ... is that it's not really much cheaper than non-crippled hardware, but years behind. A bad chromebook is actually a pretty good crippled computer.
So you get the worst of everything
a) very slow processor (that actually costs more than a decent one)
b) too low amount of memory (that actually costs more than a sufficient amount of memory)
c) no local access whatsoever. So checking what ip address the thin client got ... not possible.
d) a low-res horrible headache-inducing screen. And forget about multi-monitor or anything like that.
2) a lot of potential security issues are now not my problem
Yeah because if there's one thing other departments in companies easily and quickly do it's accept responsibility for problems ...
3) environment setup is dealt with by someone else
Seriously ... why would they do this.
4) I can code on a potato as long as it can render the screens I need
You can't. You can only code on their potate. The one with spikes that leaks the suspicious black liquid and can't be replaced. Not because it isn't easy to replace, but because the problem is IT, not the technology.
At university they tried to introduce Sun Rays for us. The main thing I remember was the horrible monitor ... and when I brought my own full hd monitor from home, it crashed. Eventually I found out why: the thin client had so little memory the higher resolution made the framebuffer not fit in memory.
Unfortunately you pay for a 4-core 8GB RAM instance, which is only used 40 hours a week, more than for a comparable 8 to 16-core 32GB RAM local PC or laptop, which you use for three years.
But I imagine it’s the same value prop as other cloud services. It’s often cheaper to run legacy architecture in legacy ways, but there are technologies and concepts only available when running at cloud scale, and for those use cases you’re getting a discount over trying to roll your own.
The result is not just added latency, but actually slower build times etc. compared to your local laptop, not to speak about a high-performance PC.