- People who don't own a computer, e.g. university students who only use the school's computers (or K-12 students even), but who still want their editor settings to be automatically saved and used, and who don't want to deal with installing things on the computers they use (or can't install things).
- People who own multiple computers and who don't want to deal with syncing configuration such as installed tools, editor settings, etc.
Onboarding with a remote setup like this can be very quick. Or really — the same tech (devcontainers) can be used locally just as easily with many of the same benefits. The onboarding/dev setup is reduced to building a few containers and getting the code. You don’t have to locally install packages or worry about incompatible versions of tools.
The remote aspect is available because it’s very easy for Microsoft to do with VSCode as an Electron app. Sadly, they are making it more difficult for anyone outside of vscode.dev to have a remote install without using their “tunnel”.
People who own a computer but prefer the iPad form factor, (taller aspect ratio is nice for code), and like having a portable 120Hz whiteboard, and arent afraid of operating said computer remotely via the iPad.
I tried it a year or two ago and I had issues with the keyboard shortcuts (had to disable keyboard shortcuts on ipados) and scrolling behaviour. I seem to recall having other issues with safari and the local files but it’s been a while.
I’m not in a place I can try it out, but if it works then that would open up remote web development.
If you save it as a shortcut to your Home Screen, it almost comes across as a native app.
I do web dev casually with it all the time via a vpn to my server back home and the inspect app for debugging