Erik Bledsoe

Technical Writer

<p>Coder was named one of the <a href="https://stackshare.io/posts/top-developer-tools-2021">top five new developer tools by StackShare</a>, the popular online community that helps developers discover and compare software tools. The top-five placement puts Coder in the company of other developer favorites such as FigJam (#3) and GitHub Copilot (#2). </p>

<p>Coder is a platform that enables organizations to move developer workstations off of local machines and into their infrastructure, whether on-premises or in the cloud.</p>

<p>“Local workstations are brittle and slow due to the increasing complexity of software projects,” said CEO Ammar Bandukwala. ”In 2021, we moved developers in the world’s largest organizations to consistent, powerful, remote workspaces. Coder helps developers achieve a flow state by removing the waiting and breaking from their inner loop.”</p>

<p>“We have big plans for Coder in 2022,” added VP of Engineering and Product Ketan Gangatirkar. “We have some major improvements we’re working on that the StackShare community will love. The best developer workspace platform is going to get even better.”</p>

<p>To learn more about how Coder can help your organization’s engineering teams achieve flow, <a href="https://coder.com/demo">schedule a demo</a>. Or <a href="https://coder.com/trial">try it out</a> by installing it on Docker or Kubernetes. </p>


The top-five placement puts Coder in the company of other developer favorites such as FigJam (#3) and GitHub Copilot (#2). 

Coder named #5 new developer tool of the year by StackShare

<p>Founded in 2016, <a href="https://www.brikl.com/">Brikl</a> is a B2B company whose e-commerce software platform for micro-stores lets users create and sell customized, branded products marketed to teams, clubs, schools, companies, and organizations. It is particularly popular with promotional wear and sportswear companies who find that Brikl’s platform and 3D configurator help their own customers design and visualize how their team and club kits will look before purchasing. </p>

<p>Like most startups, Brikl started small, with three people, two developers and one person handling the business side. Headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, today they have offices in the United States, Bangkok, London, and Amsterdam. </p>

<p>As technical co-founder, Tobias Meixner was one of those first two developers working on building the platform. Today, he serves as CTO and is responsible for ensuring his developers have the tools they need as the team grows rapidly.</p>

<h2>The problem: underpowered workstations</h2>

<p>As the team grew, Brikl faced some challenges. Brikl uses a fairly large monorepo with many frontend applications. Developers were complaining about slow performance on their local machines. </p>

<p>Tobias knew that the solution was either to continually purchase newer, ever more expensive laptops or to move development to the cloud. The path was clear. Move to the cloud. </p>

<h2>The power of the cloud: the contenders</h2>

<p>Brikl is an AWS client with their entire platform running serverless on Lambda, so AWS Cloud9 had to be considered, but was soon deemed unacceptable.</p>

<p>The Brikl team looked at code-server, the popular open source project from the folks at Coder that allows developers to run VS Code on a server and access it from the browser. But code-server is designed for individual developers, not teams, and would not scale easily enough to match Brikl’s growth. </p>

<p>Brikl also acquired an invite to the GitHub Codespaces private beta, and also tried Gitpod. Both were very good, Tobias admits, and he was particularly impressed with Gitpod.</p>

<p>However, when they tried Coder they knew that they had their solution. The developers definitely liked it. “Their Coder workspaces were much better and faster than using their laptops,” said Tobias. </p>

<p>Tobias liked Coder’s approach to workspaces as code, which fit very well with their own existing AWS infrastructure that is all driven by CloudFormation scripts. He expects to double the number of developers working for Brikl in the next year and feels confident that Coder will allow them to scale easily.</p>

<h2>First commit on day one</h2>

<p>Like most tech startups, Brikl prides itself on being able to iterate quickly. That ability has been a key component of their growth over the last five years. They want their new developers to begin contributing as soon as possible. One of the company’s goals is to have new developers make their first commit and their first PR on their first day. </p>

<p>“Coder helps us hit that goal,” says Tobias with a touch of pride that is apparent to anyone who now manages people who do what he used to do. “They don’t always do it on their first day,” he admits, “but it happens much more frequently since they started using Coder.” </p>

<h2>Learn more about Coder</h2>

<p>If you would like to learn more about how Coder can help your developer team scale and start contributing sooner, <a href="https://coder.com/demo">schedule a demo</a>. </p>

<h2>Additional reading</h2>

<ul>
<li><a href="https://coder.com/blog/coder-or-gitpod-which-is-better-for-your-team">Coder or Gitpod: Which is better for your team?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://coder.com/blog/coder-the-github-codespaces-alternative">Coder: The self-hosted GitHub Codespaces alternative</a></li>
</ul>


Coder gives Brikl’s developers the power they need when working with a large monorepo and helps to onboard new developers much more quickly.


New developers make their first commit on day #1 thanks to Coder

<p>For the second year in a row, Coder has earned a spot on Built In’s esteemed Best Places to Work Awards. Coder is listed as <a href="https://builtin.com/remote-work/best-places-remote-work">one of the Best Remote Companies to Work For in 2022</a>. Last year, Coder was named one of the Best Companies to Work For in Austin. The Best Remote Companies is a new category this year, created in response to the changes in the workforce spurred by the pandemic. Coder transitioned to a remote-first workforce in late 2020. The new category put Coder in competition not only with other Austin-based companies but also companies across the country in the eight largest tech markets that Built In covers.</p>

<p>“It’s an honor for Coder to be recognized,” said Coder CEO and co-founder Ammar Bandukwala. “It’s really a testament to the great work our human resources staff has done. The past two years fundamentally changed what tech professionals want from work, and it makes me happy that Coder is able to provide that.”</p>

<p>Built In determines the winners of Best Places to Work based on an algorithm, using company data about compensation, benefits, and companywide programming. To reflect the benefits candidates are searching for more frequently on Built In, the program also weighs criteria like remote and flexible work opportunities; programs for diversity, equity, and inclusion; and other people-first cultural offerings. The Best Places to Work Awards, now in its fourth year, honor companies across numerous categories.</p>

<p>Wanna work for a great company that treats its employees well? <a href="https://coder.com/careers">We’re hiring</a>!</p>


For the second year in a row, Coder has earned a spot on Built In’s esteemed Best Places to Work Awards. Coder is listed as one of the Best Remote Companies to Work For in 2022. 

Coder honored as a best remote-first employer

Jonathan Yu

Senior Software Engineer

<p><strong>Development teams deserve better than VDI</strong></p>

<p>The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a huge increase in the use of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and its closely related cousin Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS). A 2020 study <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/08/17/2079060/0/en/Impact-of-COVID-19-on-the-Virtual-Desktop-Infrastructure-VDI-Industry-2020-2027-Demand-from-IT-Telecom-Sector-Amid-COVID-19-Anticipated-to-Drive-Growth.html">predicts a compound annual growth rate of 14.4% for VDI</a> between 2019 and 2027, and Gartner forecasts <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/why-covid-19-drove-an-increase-in-daas">DaaS usage to grow over 150%</a> between 2020 and 2023.</p>

<p><strong>Organizations turn to VDI for a variety of reasons including:</strong> </p>

<ul>
<li>enabling remote work and mobility</li>
<li>simplifying desktop management </li>
<li>running arbitrary desktop applications</li>
<li>providing enhanced security </li>
<li>improving scalability and performance</li>
<li>onboarding and off-boarding contractors and external employees</li>
</ul>

<p>But for developers, the typical Windows-based VDI is overkill and adds unnecessary overhead. </p>

<h2>Coder vs. VDI: A Detailed Comparison</h2>

<p>A dedicated developer workspace platform like Coder meets the needs of the organization that drove its VDI adoption while providing developers with a better experience than VDI. System administrators benefit as well since the lighter-weight developer workspaces in Coder require fewer resources and can be packed more densely on your infrastructure.</p>

<h3>Enabling remote work and mobility</h3>

<p>Much of the recent growth in the use of VDI results from the sudden shift to remote work as a result of the pandemic, though broader trends are playing a part as well. </p>

<p>Like VDI, with Coder developer workspaces are centralized and <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/setup/architecture">run within the organization’s infrastructure</a>. Developers can access their workspaces from wherever they are—their home, a coffee shop, the office—and using any device, <a href="https://coder.com/blog/i-developed-on-an-ipad-for-two-weeks">even an iPad</a>.</p>

<h3>Simplifying desktop management</h3>

<p>VDI allows IT to maintain a minimal number of master images. Rather than spending time troubleshooting an individual user’s machine, IT staff simply create a new virtual desktop allowing the user to resume work immediately. </p>

<p>With Coder, developer workspaces are created from a centrally managed image repository. Developers can create or rebuild existing workspaces or launch a new one with a click of a button, no need to open a ticket. And unlike most VDI implementations, developers’ <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/workspaces/personalization">customizations to their workspaces persist</a> across rebuilds and automatically load with new workspaces.</p>

<h3>Providing enhanced security</h3>

<p>VDI is a common solution for organizations that prioritize a high level of security or are in highly regulated industries. </p>

<p>Coder applies the same principles as VDI in this regard: limit access to the organization’s resources and keep valuable information and data off of user endpoints. As a result, Coder is an ideal component for <a href="https://coder.com/whitepapers/zero-trust-security-for-software-development-teams">implementing zero-trust security for software development teams</a>. It even <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/setup/air-gapped">fully functions in air-gapped networks</a>. </p>

<h3>Improving scalability and performance</h3>

<p>Organizations that are growing rapidly or that employ large numbers of seasonal workers often use VDI to avoid the bottleneck of acquiring physical devices. </p>

<p>Because Coder is deployed on Kubernetes, it can easily scale out to accommodate more users or scale in when the demand diminishes.</p>

<h3>Onboarding and off-boarding contractors and external employees</h3>

<p>Organizations that utilize large numbers of contractors use VDI to quickly provision and de-provision desktop resources as needed. This allows outside consultants to bring in their own laptops, access centralized desktops, and conduct their jobs, and for IT staff to quickly and efficiently cut off access at the end of the contract.</p>

<p>Again, Coder applies the same principles specifically for developers. By centralizing the management and orchestration of developer workspaces, Coder significantly reduces their onboarding times (whether they are contract or full time). Instead of being given access to a virtual machine and then needing to configure their development environment with all the dependencies required for a project (just as they would with a physical endpoint), developers can immediately begin coding in a preconfigured workspace. </p>

<p>Nearly all of Coder’s customers cite <a href="https://coder.com/blog/coder-customer-spotlight-kazoo">reduced onboarding times as a key factor in deciding to go with Coder</a>. </p>

<h2>Coder = A better experience for developers</h2>

<p>Coder clearly satisfies the business requirements that often drive the adoption of VDI. But while VDI is a general solution for running any application, Coder is optimized specifically for writing code. As a result, Coder provides a significantly better experience for developers.  Unlike VDI where all windows are within a single window, Coder allows developers to move IDEs, terminals, and other windows across all of their monitors. </p>

<h3>Faster builds and tests</h3>

<p>Coder allows developers to use the power and scale of the cloud to offload the burden of slow builds and tests from their local machine. While this is certainly true as well when moving the developer environment to VDI, Coder offers much more flexibility.</p>

<p>Because Coder enables “self-service” developer workspace creation, a developer could, for instance, increase the CPU and memory in their Coder workspace before beginning an intensive build or test. </p>

<p>Even better, Coder can also be <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/guides/admin/resources">configured to share processor and memory resources between workspaces</a>, allowing workspaces to use idle processor and memory capacity while reducing total resource utilization.</p>

<h3>Reduced configuration drift</h3>

<p>How many hours have been wasted debugging a failed deployment after someone said “but it worked on my machine!”? </p>

<p>By ensuring that all members of the team are working from the same pre-configured image, <a href="https://coder.com/blog/what-is-configuration-drift">Coder reduces configuration drift</a>. Moreover, since workspaces run from an immutable container image, updating the application runtime or other dependencies is as simple as rebuilding the workspace, ensuring that the entire team is using a matching development environment. There is also a rich ecosystem of container signing and scanning tools, which ensures that containers are secure and contain up-to-date versions of system libraries and other applications.</p>

<p>While this is certainly also possible with VDI, it would be more difficult. VDI is intended to meet the general computing needs of the organization as a whole. Users sometimes expect full persistence of their environment, which provides a familiar experience but introduces the same challenges as managing end-user devices, particularly around ensuring patching, updates, and resolving software incompatibilities. As a result, developers who are required to use VDI are often provided a virtual desktop and told to configure their own environments on it, which inevitably leads to configuration drift and more “works on my machine” type problems.</p>

<h3>Low latency</h3>

<p>If you asked developers who are VDI averse to explain their reluctance, the most common answer would probably be the latency associated with VDI, particularly on slow networks or when experiencing high packet loss. </p>

<p>VDI works by rendering a full virtual desktop environment and sending it to the client. It transmits relatively large packets of data back and forth across the network for each keystroke or movement of the mouse.</p>

<p>While VDI vendors have made significant improvements in optimizing compression of these frames, the requirement for VDI systems to render a full graphical desktop inevitably results in higher load on the server and a perceptibly slower experience for users, particularly those working on a slower connection, such as those in the home. Many office applications, such as reading email, do not have a high degree of interactivity. In these cases, higher round-trip latency does not significantly degrade the user experience, but that’s not true for developer workspaces.</p>

<p>Coder works differently. When using VS Code in the browser, everything you type is rendered locally on your computer, then sent to the server to synchronize, significantly reducing the data packets that must travel back and forth, and thereby significantly reducing latency. Since it is purpose-built for software development, Coder can optimize the experience of writing code, much more intelligently than generic VDI solutions.</p>

<p>Developers can also run many IDEs locally and connect to their remote workspace through SSH, allowing them to take advantage of both the responsiveness of their local environment while offloading compute-intensive tasks like builds and tests to the remote workspace. </p>

<p>The result is a remote workspace that feels local.</p>


<h2>Comparison Chart</h2>

<table><thead>
<tr>
<th></th>
<th style="text-align: center">Coder</th>
<th style="text-align: center">VDI</th>
</tr>
</thead><tbody>
<tr>
<td>Remote access to workspace</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Centralized management of workspaces</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Keeps data off of endpoints</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Well suited for zero-trust networks</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Deploy in air-gapped environments</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Easily scalable</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Install on your own infrastructure, including on-premises</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Portability across clouds</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Limited, may require nested virtualization</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Faster onboarding</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Pre-configured development workspaces</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Not usually</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Self-serve workspace creation</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Not usually</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Resource sharing during bursty workloads</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Not usually</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Reduce configuration drift</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Not usually</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Lowest latency</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Run arbitrary desktop applications</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Through VNC</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Integrate with cloud-native technologies, such as service meshes, advanced observability tools, security tools</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Not usually</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Use container scanning tools to ensure system dependencies are up-to-date</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">No</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Use familiar container development tools, such as Docker</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
<td style="text-align: center">✅</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Licensing model</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Per user (seat)</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Sometimes per user; often per-host-CPU</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Windows license required</td>
<td style="text-align: center">No, workspaces run on Linux</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Yes, as an additional purchase</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>


<h2>See for yourself</h2>

<p>To learn more about how Coder can provide a better experience than VDI for your development team, <a href="https://coder.com/demo">request a demo</a>.</p>

<h2>Learn more</h2>

<p>See how Coder compares to GitHub Codespaces, Gitpod, VDI, and other solutions for remote development.</p>


Development teams deserve better than VDI. Coder provides an alternative to VDI for teams that require low latency, reduced configuration drift, faster builds, and more.

Coder: A better VDI alternative for developers

Ashley McClelland

Head of Marketing

<h2>Update</h2>

<p><em>The original article was written by Erik Bledsoe and Ashley McClelland. We’ve updated it to cover the latest details about GitHub Codespaces and Coder.</em></p>


<p>GitHub <a href="https://github.com/features/codespaces">Codespaces</a> and Coder both provide developers with reproducible, powerful, cloud-based developer environments or workspaces, but they differ dramatically in their approach to providing those environments and what tooling is available to the developer. </p>

<p>Here&#39;s how to choose the best fit for your development team.</p>

<h2>Why remote developement</h2>

<p>Today most developers have their IDEs on their local machines. There is a growing interest in moving development workspaces and IDEs to the cloud, which solves some key problems for organizations while also offering advantages for the developer:</p>

<ul>
<li><p><strong>start coding on day one</strong> — developers often spend hours or days setting up a development environment on a local machine before they can make their first commit. With cloud-based workspaces, fully configured workspaces are available for developers to <a href="https://coder.com/solutions/productivity">start contributing immediately</a>.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>secure source code</strong> — individual devices remain the <a href="https://coder.com/solutions/security">least secure endpoint in the software development pipeline</a>. With local development, source code and data are cloned to individual workstations, creating security risks. With cloud-based workspaces, source code and data remain within the organization’s infrastructure.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>less drift</strong> — dependency and <a href="https://coder.com/blog/what-is-configuration-drift">configuration drift in the development environment results in broken environments and builds</a>, i.e., the classic “it works on my machine” problem. Reproducible, cloud-based developer workspaces ensure that everyone is working with the same basic configuration. </p></li>
<li><p><strong>greater compute power</strong> — cloud development eliminates the need to focus on local hardware. Need more processing power? <a href="https://coder.com/solutions/productivity">Add more cores to your instance</a>—or a GPU.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>remote access</strong> — because development environments are in the cloud, developers can <a href="https://coder.com/solutions/productivity">access them securely from wherever they are</a>.</p></li>
</ul>

<h2>GitHub Codespaces: Easy to use, but limited in control</h2>

<p>GitHub Codespaces is tightly integrated with the GitHub interface. That integration makes it incredibly simple to use, but also limits your options. Launching a Codespace is as easy as visiting a repository in your browser and clicking a button or pressing the period on your keyboard.  </p>

<p>However, Codespaces can’t be used with any other repository other than GitHub.</p>

<p>If you and your team only use VS Code, and you only use GitHub, then GitHub Codespaces is probably your best solution.</p>

<h2>Coder: Your infrastructure, your tools, your controls</h2>

<p>If, however, your development team requires a multi-cloud strategy or you require an air-gapped development platform, then you should consider Coder.</p>

<p>Coder’s goal is to remove the obstacles that prevent developers from doing what they do best, writing code; our goal is not to lock you into a proprietary ecosystem. At Coder, we assume that you and your team know what editors work best for you, what cloud providers you want to use, what workflows are best for your team.</p>

<p>That’s why Coder takes an agnostic approach to the tools and platforms you use. Coder’s approach also gives you greater control over data and source code since it never needs to leave your infrastructure (depending upon your configurations). That’s why it is used by some of the most security-conscious organizations and companies in the world like investment banks, hedge funds, retailers, asset managers, IT services firms, software providers, energy, military, and the intelligence community.</p>


<h2>Pricing</h2>

<p><a href="https://docs.github.com/en/billing/managing-billing-for-github-codespaces/about-billing-for-codespaces">Codespaces billing</a> is based on an hourly rate for actively running Codespaces with rates increased based upon the number of cores available to the Codespace. The hourly rate ranges from $0.18/hour for two cores up to $2.88/hour for a thirty-two-core Codespace. In addition, there is a $0.07/GB/month charge for storage. A developer using a 4 core Codespace for eight hours a day would cost $60.48 (not including storage) for a month assuming twenty-one working days.</p>

<p>Coder is billed per user/year. <a href="https://coder.com/pricing">Contact Sales</a> for more information. Because it is running on your own infrastructure you have to <a href="https://coder.com/blog/controlling-remote-development-costs-on-public-clouds">include the cloud computing cost</a> in your total cost of ownership (TCO) calculation, but you retain complete control of that. This means organizations can take advantage of any current cloud provider discounts and keep the bill for all cloud usage in a single place. Additionally, Coder helps <a href="https://coder.com/blog/controlling-remote-development-costs-on-public-clouds">control cloud costs</a> by allowing admins to automatically shut down inactive workspaces and limiting the number of resources that can be used by an individual workspace. </p>

<h2>Customer Spotlight: Palantir</h2>

<p>When Palantir needed a solution to standardize development environments, increase performance, and integrate with their cloud ecosystem, <a href="https://blog.palantir.com/the-benefits-of-remote-ephemeral-workspaces-1a1251ed6e53">Coder was the answer</a>.</p>

<h2>Try Coder</h2>

<p>If you would like to learn more about how Coder provides an alternative to GitHub Codespaces, <a href="https://coder.com/demo">request a demo</a> or <a href="https://github.com/coder/coder">check out Coder OSS on GitHub</a>, <a href="https://coder.com/trial">start a Coder Enterprise trial</a>.</p>


Coder provides an alternative to GitHub Codespaces for teams that require more options for editors and greater control over their infrastructure.


Coder: The self-hosted GitHub Codespaces alternative

Marc Paquette

Freelance Writer

<h2>Update</h2>

<p><em>The original article was written by Erik Bledsoe. Here’s a summary of the updates to this article:</em></p>

<ul>
<li><em>We’ve added a section on developer-friendly keyboards you can use with your iPad</em></li>
<li><em>Textastic no longer supports Google Drive because of some recent changes in Google’s policies. Like the other native iOS apps in this article, Textastic is still among the most popular dev tools hosted on iOS.</em></li>
<li><em>JetBrains has stopped development of Projector as a standalone project. It’s now part of Gateway.</em></li>
<li><em>After Coder engineer Joe Previte had to send his MacBook in for repairs, he wrote a blog post about how he was able to continue working productively <a href="https://coder.com/blog/i-developed-on-an-ipad-for-two-weeks">using Coder on an iPad for two weeks</a>.</em></li>
</ul>

<h2>Introduction</h2>

<p>Each new release of the iPad Pro generates a slew of claims that it’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pReT94WMMHQ">ready to replace your laptop</a> or it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYPkU9yFyJs">still isn’t up to the task</a>.</p>

<p>At the same time, the availability of cloud-based IDEs has reduced the need for powerful local machines by moving the compute-intensive tasks to the cloud.</p>

<p>Perhaps the iPad doesn’t need to replace your laptop; perhaps the cloud has already done so?</p>

<p>In this post, we&#39;ll take a look at the options for ditching your laptop in favor of an iPad for writing code on the go.</p>

<h2>Why Code on an iPad?</h2>

<p>So why would anyone want to code on an iPad? Convenience. They are more portable than a laptop, and the latest generation of iPad Pro easily matches the capabilities of most laptops with the M4 processor’s 9 CPU cores, 16GB RAM, and 13-inch screen.</p>

<p>Having a single device you can use to check email, watch movies in bed, and write code just makes life easier. And I’m not the only one that thinks so. Adrian Twarog, whose development and design-focused YouTube channel has over 350K subscribers. His video of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kXuo8uOwgg">coding on an iPad for a week</a> has racked up over 1.5 million views so far.</p>


Being able to code with an iPad means you don't need to haul around a heavy laptop when traveling

<h2>Using a keyboard</h2>

<p>The iOS onscreen keyboard works well, but it consumes a significant part of the screen’s real estate. You’ll be more productive when coding with a physical keyboard. </p>

<p>iOS fully supports Bluetooth devices, so <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/ipad/ipad997da4cf/17.0/ipados/17.0">connecting them is straightforward</a>. Apple offers the Magic Keyboard, which doubles as a protective cover so it takes up practically no extra space in your backpack. There’s also the range of keyboard/covers from Logitech, giving you more choice, including lower prices.</p>

<p>For the more hardcore coders, you can always connect a full-sized Bluetooth keyboard. What you lose in portability, you gain in the familiarity of your favorite layout and feel. If you’re not a touch typist, or even if you are, consider getting a physical mouse, trackpad, or stylus too.</p>

<h2>The Choice: native iPad apps vs. using a cloud-based IDE</h2>

<p>There are two possibilities for writing code with an iPad. You can elect to use a native iOS app or use the iPad as a thin client to connect to an IDE running on another machine or server.</p>

<h2>Using native iPad apps for writing code</h2>

<p>Let’s get this out of the way up front — there is no native iOS app for <a href="https://code.visualstudio.com/">VS Code</a> — the most popular code editor by far. And given that iOS is incompatible with the Electron framework upon which VS Code is built it seems unlikely that there will ever be a VS Code iOS app. For some, this may be a deal-breaker for choosing to use a native app.</p>

<p>The biggest hurdle to using an iPad for coding is its lack of a runtime environment for most languages, forcing you to move your files to a server for compiling and testing.</p>

<p>That being said, there are a ton of code editors in the iOS app store, many of them fairly mediocre. Here are a few of the best, most popular ones.</p>

<h2>Textastic</h2>

<p><a href="https://www.textasticapp.com/">Textastic</a> is probably the most popular code editor for iOS, and for good reasons. It supports syntax highlighting of more than 80 programming and markup languages. Its interface is snappy and uses native iOS frameworks like Core Text. You can access files via FTP, SFTP, and WebDAV, or from Dropbox. </p>

<p>Because of <a href="https://blach.io/2024/03/28/removal-of-textastic-google-drive-client/">Google’s recent policy changes</a>, Textastic no longer supports Google Drive. But that probably doesn’t matter that much because Textastic integrates with the iOS Git client Working Copy (more below), allowing you to access projects on GitHub, GitLab, and other repositories. And it has an SSH terminal built-in to let you connect to your remote servers. For usability, Textastic has a dark mode and it <a href="https://textexpander.com/blog/textexpander-crossover-textastic-code-editor-for-mac-ipad-and-iphone">integrates with TextExpander</a> to reduce typing.</p>


Editing an ePub file with Textastic

<h2>Koder</h2>

<p>Like Textastic, <a href="https://koderapp.com/">Koder</a> has been around for over a decade. Its feature set is similar to Textastic as well, with syntax highlighting, support for FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and Dropbox, and integration with Working Copy for Git repositories. Koder is free and that might lead you to use it instead of Textastic if you are on a super tight budget. But really the choice between the two could just come down to personal preference.</p>


Accessing files via SFTP with Koder

<h2>Pythonista</h2>

<p>While Textastic and Koder take the Swiss Army knife approach to supported languages, <a href="https://pythonista.app/">Pythonista</a>, as you might guess from the name, focuses solely upon Python. I include it here because:</p>

<ul>
<li>Python is my current language of choice</li>
<li>Pythonista is a great example of an app that integrates with the OS that it runs on.</li>
</ul>

<p>Pythonista provides a full-featured editor, includes some popular libraries like NumPy and MatPlotLib, allows you to run your scripts directly on your device, and has an integrated debugger.</p>


Pythonista gives you a full IDE for Python on your iPad

<p>One of the best things about Pythonista is its integration with iOS. Your scripts can access data from the clipboard, your contacts, reminders, and photos, as well as your device&#39;s motion sensors and geo-location data. It also supports the split-screen feature available on iOS.</p>

<p>However, you are limited to using either Python 2.7 or 3.5. Additional libraries can also be a bit of a pain to install at times.</p>

<h2>Working Copy</h2>

<p>If you are going to use your iPad and a native editor or IDE for anything more than playing around, you are going to need to install <a href="https://workingcopyapp.com/">Working Copy</a> so that you can access Git repositories. Working Copy is the standard Git client for iOS. The free version allows you to clone repositories, but if you want to <code>push</code> your commits you’ll need to purchase the paid Pro version. </p>


Working Copy brings Git to the iPad and dramatically improves the functionality of native editors that support it

<h2>Native development — not quite there</h2>

<p>With the right apps, the experience of coding on an iPad using a native editor can be very good. There are workarounds for tasks like compiling that can’t be accomplished on iOS, but they are just that, workarounds. It’s fine for a hobbyist or someone learning how to code, or even occasionally for a professional developer who needs to make a quick fix while away from their primary machine. But if you make your living writing code or just spend lots of time coding, using the native apps will be too frustrating in the long run.</p>

<p>That’s where cloud computing comes in.</p>

<h2>Using a cloud-based IDE for writing code on an iPad</h2>

<p>Cloud-based IDEs offer the developer an experience much more similar to working on their local desktop or laptop machine. If you use your iPad as a highly portable client to access your cloud-based development environments then you can use fully-featured cloud-based IDEs and skip the workarounds needed when using native iOS apps.</p>

<p>For professional developers and serious hobbyists, this is the way to go. Cloud-based IDEs are accessible from any device, whether that is the workstation you use on a daily basis or an iPad that you use on occasion. In many cases, they also provide far more compute power than is available on your iPad or even your laptop. And you have lots of options to fit your needs, whether you are working solo or as part of a team. Here are some of the best.</p>

<h2>code-server</h2>

<p>Thousands of developers use <a href="https://github.com/cdr/code-server">code-server</a> every day to run VS Code on any machine and access it through the browser. It’s an open source project maintained by the developers of Coder (more about Coder later). Depending on your needs, you can install it on an old machine you have lying around or on a beefy VM. I have it running on an older Mac Mini in my home lab, and many others have installed it on a Raspberry Pi or on a low-cost (or even free) platform like <a href="https://coder.com/blog/deploy-coder-on-railway-app">Railway</a>.</p>


<p>Once it is installed you can use your iPad (or any other machine) to connect and work just as if you were running VS Code locally. There’s even a page in the docs specifically for <a href="https://coder.com/docs/code-server/latest/ipad">accessing your code-server installation using an iPad</a>.</p>

<p>A really handy feature of code-server is that if you start it with the <code>--link</code> command you&#39;ll get TLS, authentication, and a dedicated URL for accessing your IDE out of the box — no having to mess with <a href="https://letsencrypt.org/">Let’s Encrypt</a> certificates.</p>


Starting code-server with the --link command provides you with a custom URL and sets up HTTPS and GitHub authentication

<p>It’s also amazingly snappy. Developers who have tried coding remotely with <a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/how-to-use-remote-desktop-5fe128d5-8fb1-7a23-3b8a-41e636865e8c">RDP</a> or VDI are often surprised at the lack of lag when using code-server. </p>

<p>With code-server you’re limited to a single user login per installation, so it’s not well suited for teams, but if you are an individual and you use VS Code exclusively, then it may be the perfect solution. It’s free and you just need to pay for the hosting. </p>

<h2>Gateway</h2>

<p>What code-server does for VS Code, <a href="https://www.jetbrains.com/remote-development/gateway/">Gateway</a> does for the JetBrains family of IDEs, including IntelliJ, PyCharm, PhpStorm, RubyMine, and others. Gateway is from the folks at JetBrains. Install it on a machine and as part of the installation process it will ask you which IDE you want to run and it will download and install it as well.</p>


Testing a python script in the terminal while using PyCharm running through Projector

<h2>Codespaces</h2>

<p>If you are part of a team of developers, you’ll probably need to step up from code-server to something more robust. GitHub <a href="https://github.com/features/codespaces">Codespaces</a> lets you click a button on a GitHub repository to launch a workspace running VS Code with up to 32 cores, fully configured for working with that project. It’s powerful, it’s fast, and it’s iPad friendly.</p>


Visiting a repository in a browser and pressing the period key (.) was all it took to start up a Codespaces instance

<p>There are some limitations, however. Since Codespaces is tightly integrated with the GitHub interface, it can’t be used with any other repository other than GitHub. VS Code is currently the only supported IDE. Also, it is only available to organizations using GitHub Team and Enterprise plans, although individuals can use it for free for a limited number of hours/month. </p>

<h2>Coder</h2>

<p><a href="https://coder.com">Coder</a> is a cloud development management platform from the developers who created code-server. Like Codespaces, Coder provides easy one-click launch of developer workspaces. Unlike Codespaces, Coder takes an agnostic approach to the products it supports. If you can provision it, Coder probably supports it. That includes not only VS Code, but also <a href="https://coder.com/docs/v2/latest/ides">Jupyter, RStudio, IntelliJ</a>, as well as all the major Git repositories.</p>


Coder allows you access to multiple editors, even from an iPad

<h2>Conclusion</h2>

<p>It is absolutely possible to write code while using your iPad. Most people would still agree that the experience is better using a laptop, if for no other reason than for the larger screen options that usually provides. But in a pinch or for short periods of time, the experience can be quite nice.</p>

<p>For years, many developers have been waiting for the iPad hardware to improve to a point where it could be considered more than just a toy to play at coding. Ironically, just as the iPad Pro has achieved that milestone, the growing adoption of cloud-based IDEs makes the hardware you have in your hands less important than the workspace you can connect to in the cloud.</p>

<h2>Try Coder</h2>

<p>Coder offloads development from local workstations to your on-prem and public cloud infrastructure. Boost developer productivity with instant onboarding and powerful server resources. Keep code and data under control within your network. <a href="https://coder.com/docs/v2/latest/install">Install Coder on your infrastructure</a>.</p>


Using your iPad to code remotely unlocks your developer potential. From VS code to IntelliJ  & more, learn how to use your favorite IDEs on an iPad or mobile device.

A guide to writing code on an iPad

<p>When Joe Mainwaring was in high school he participated in a robotics competition during which he got to meet retired Air Force Brigadier General Chuck Yeager. Joe was in awe of Yeager and his accomplishments. Yeager earned a reputation as a flying ace during World War II; after the war, he became one of the military’s premier test pilots and was the first person to break the sound barrier. At the beginning of NASA’s race to the moon, he trained most of the United States’ first astronauts. Joe cites Yeager’s attention and encouragement as being a driving force in his pursuit of engineering.</p>

<p>Today, Joe works as the Director of Infrastructure at Kazoo, creators of the leading all-in-one employee experience platform for human resources. In his position, Joe often spends his days looking for solutions to problems that the teams at Kazoo don’t even recognize they have, or problems that they likely will have if Joe doesn’t find a solution first. The key is always to be thinking ahead, not reacting, but rather watching, planning, and researching. </p>

<h2>The challenge: reduce onboarding time</h2>

<p>One area where Joe saw an opportunity for improvement was in onboarding new developers. Kazoo&#39;s product uses microservices, so when new engineers started working they needed to download three different applications to their local development environment and get them running before they could start writing code. Even for very experienced developers, it was an arduous task and took the better part of a day. Less experienced developers needed at least twice as much time. </p>

<p>Those times are significantly less than at many other companies, but Joe thought they could be better. After all, in 1947 when Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier few people thought humans needed to fly that fast, but some people like Joe and Yeager are always thinking ahead. </p>

<h2>Two contenders: Codespaces and Coder</h2>

<p>Joe had managed to receive an invitation to try the public beta of GitHub Codespaces and he enjoyed using it for personal projects. So he was familiar with the benefits of a cloud-powered development environment and how they could be used to spin up development environments in minutes rather than hours. </p>

<p>He also knew, though, that Codespaces wouldn’t work well with Kazoo’s infrastructure which is entirely GCP-based. Kazoo needed something that they could run on their own infrastructure. </p>

<p>While discussing the problem, a colleague mentioned that he used code-server for his own personal projects to access his development environment from anywhere and run VS Code in the browser. He also knew that the code-server developers had an enterprise product called Coder and suggested that Joe take a look at it. </p>

<p>After some research, a demo, and a trial Joe was convinced. </p>

<p>Coder checked the boxes:</p>

<ul>
<li>Runs on Kazoo’s own infrastructure</li>
<li>Reduces onboarding time to minutes</li>
</ul>

<p>“It&#39;s just pressing that button to spin up a new instance,” says Joe, “and then within less than a minute our engineers have access to their own workspace with VS Code.”</p>

<h2>Keeping developers in flow, even on an iPad</h2>

<p>Kazoo’s engineers have embraced Coder. “They see this as a tool that benefits them,” explains Joe. “Hands down there.”</p>

<p>“I&#39;m a multi-tasker,” says Lead Engineer Ryan Poe. “While waiting for PRs to merge or be read, I like to work on other PRs. Switching between branches requires frequent code rebuilds that would chew up my laptop resources. Coder has made me more productive by simply taking the responsibility of running and building code out of my poor lil&#39; laptop&#39;s hands!”</p>

<p>Many developers are reluctant to switch to cloud-based workspaces, fearing that the experience will be too sluggish. Ryan disagrees. “Having my own box with 8 or more CPUs and 32+ gb of memory that <em>only</em> runs my dev server makes everything feel much faster than the local development experience.”</p>

<p>Joe also appreciates the freedom that comes with cloud-based developer workspaces. “I have an iPad with the Smart Folio case. I can do development on this using Coder,” he says while gesturing with his iPad. “I can&#39;t do local development on the iPad. So travel with this, you know, and still do coding if need be versus taking the 15-inch laptop, which is heavy and a pain when you&#39;re going through TSA.”</p>

<h2>Always looking ahead</h2>

<p>The issue of reducing onboarding time was Joe’s biggest driver for looking for a solution like Coder. But he also had something else in mind as well. </p>

<p>For quite some time, Kazoo has used a homebrew system to test feature branches. It allows them to compile their application and deploy it in a test environment before the changes are actually merged. It has worked great. It still works great. </p>

<p>The only problem? The author of that system left Kazoo a little over a year ago, making the system difficult to maintain. </p>

<p>For someone who spends a lot of time looking for solutions to problems that the teams he supports don’t even recognize yet, Joe knew it needed to be addressed sooner rather than later.</p>

<p>Today, the teams are mostly doing their future branch testing using Coder and the old manual process is about to be sunsetted. </p>

<h2>Try Coder for free</h2>

<p>If you would like to see how Coder can reduce your onboarding time and solve other problems for your organization, <a href="https://coder.com/trial">request a free trial</a> or <a href="https://coder.com/demo">schedule a demo</a> with one of our solutions architects. </p>


While searching for a way to reduce developer onboarding times, Kazoo evaluated Coder and Codespaces. They chose Coder because it runs on their infrastructure.

Coder customer spotlight: Kazoo 

<p>In &quot;<a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/creating-a-solid-data-science-development-environment-60df14ce3a34">Creating a solid Data Science development environment</a>,&quot; Gabriel dos Santos Gonçalves describes the joy he and other data scientists feel as they dive into a new data set. Too often, though, the revelry is broken by the need to attend to what Gonçalves calls the “not so fun” part of his job—setting up his workstation with all the apps and libraries necessary for the project. “In general,” he writes, “we Data Scientists tend to focus more on the results (a model, a visualization, etc) than the process itself, meaning that we don’t pay enough attention to documentation and versioning as much as a software engineer.” </p>

<p>He then goes on to lay out the steps he recommends for setting up a reproducible development environment that provides the languages, dependencies, and tooling necessary for his projects—the drudgery that data scientists must do before getting to the fun stuff.</p>

<p>In this post, I’ll show you how Coder saves data scientists from that drudgery by allowing them to create fully configured workspaces with the click of a button. Coder also solves a number of other problems that data scientists face on a daily basis such as the need for compute power, protecting data sets, and data latency.</p>

<h2>Spend time analyzing data, not configuring environments</h2>

<p>Coder centralizes the creation and orchestration of workspaces for development in a secure and repeatable way using Infrastructure as Code. With Dockerfiles and Coder workspace templates, teams can prepare a development environment once. The result is a reproducible development environment that provides the languages, dependencies, and tooling necessary for a project and that can be used by any data scientist on the team with permissions. </p>

<p>To get started on a project, a data scientist only has to select a workspace and start analyzing the data, avoiding all of the “not so fun” stuff that goes along with setting up and configuring the environment.</p>


A Coder workspace configured with commonly used data science tools

<p>If a team member is working on the same project, they can launch a workspace from the same image and be certain that an analysis that runs in one environment will produce the same results on both workspaces. No more, “well, it works on my machine.”</p>

<h3>Context switching made easy</h3>

<p>Creating workspaces from Docker images also makes it much easier to move quickly from one project to another. <a href="https://coder.com/videos/setting-up-cloud-dev-environments-in-5-minutes-with-coder">Spinning up a workspace to help out with a new project takes minutes</a>. Context switching between projects shouldn’t take days. </p>

<h2>Coder supports the tools data scientists use</h2>

<p>Coder has built-in support for <a href="https://github.com/dynamicwebpaige/kaggle-survey-spelunking/blob/main/README.md#tools">the IDEs most preferred by data scientists</a>, including RStudio, PyCharm, Jupyter, and VS Code. While Jupyter is by far the most commonly used IDE for data exploration, data scientists commonly switch between IDEs depending upon whether they are exploring a data set or implementing a model to be used by the business. Coder supports this workflow by <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/workspaces/editors">supporting multiple IDEs</a> accessible through the browser or SSH. </p>

<p>As I’ll demonstrate below, because Coder workspaces are created from Dockerfiles, those images can be pre-configured with any of the required IDEs, the precise version of Python required for a project, as well as all of the libraries typically used such as NumPy, Pandas, Keras, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and others. The data scientist should never have to worry about whether they remembered to install a needed library or conflicts between versions. </p>

<p>Coder also <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/admin/git">integrates with the major version control system providers</a> (VCS)—including GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket Server—allowing data scientists to colloborate on code as well as data. </p>

<h3>Data platform agnostic</h3>

<p>Coder doesn’t care where your data is stored. Whether you use AWS, Google Cloud, Databricks, Snowflake, an on-site data warehouse, or some combination of all of the above, if you can access your data you can do so through your Coder workspace.</p>

<p>Whether we are talking about IDEs, VCS, data platforms, or cloud providers, our goal at Coder is to integrate with the tools and services you already use, not to lock you into a particular toolset. </p>

<h2>Use the power of the cloud to crunch large data sets</h2>

<p>Analyzing millions and millions of data points to train your deep learning model takes a lot of compute power and memory. With Coder workspaces, that compute power and memory is provided by the Kubernetes cluster, not the scientist’s local machine. In addition, <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/guides/admin/resources#individual-vs-shared-resources">workspaces can be configured to automatically draw upon the cluster’s unused memory and CPUs</a>, adding additional power during periods of high need. </p>

<p>Coder workspaces can also be <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/admin/workspace-management/gpu-acceleration">configured with a Graphics Processing Unit </a> (GPU), allowing them to harness the massive parallelism of the GPU.</p>

<p>Drawing upon the power and scale of the cloud significantly reduces the time needed to analyze massive data sets. It also frees up the data scientist’s personal machine, allowing them to work on other tasks while the cloud workspace churns away. They could even spin up a new workspace and start working on a separate project while the analysis is running. Try doing that with even the beefiest workstation.  </p>

<h2>Protect intellectual property and customer data</h2>

<p>Data breaches present a real and present danger to most companies, and the situation is only getting worse. 2020 was the worst year on record in terms of the total number of records exposed, and it <a href="https://pages.riskbasedsecurity.com/hubfs/Reports/2020/2020%20Q3%20Data%20Breach%20QuickView%20Report.pdf">broke the previous record before the end of the second quarter</a>.  The annual Data Breach Investigations Report identified over <a href="https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir/2021/masters-guide/">5,200 confirmed data breaches in 2021</a>. While most data breaches are the result of outside malicious agents and/or human error, the number of threats from malicious insiders <a href="https://securityboulevard.com/2020/04/insider-threats-jump-47-percent-as-incident-costs-reach-11-45-million-new-study-shows/">increased 47% between 2018 and 2020</a>. </p>

<p>From a security perspective, there are few good reasons to allow sensitive data and intellectual property to reside on an individual’s device. </p>

<p>Yet, training and running machine learning models require data, often sensitive data like customer data.</p>

<p>With Coder, this data remains isolated and secure in workspaces residing on the cluster, not sitting on data scientists’ personal devices, thereby reducing the risk of both accidental and malicious data leakage.</p>

<h2>Decreased data latency</h2>

<p>In addition to the security benefits of not downloading data to local machines, there are also significant efficiencies to be had. </p>

<p>Data scientists frequently work with large data sets that are stored in the organization’s cloud, either in buckets or databases. Downloading data or even returning query results to the user’s local machine requires the data to traverse the distance between the cloud provider’s servers and the organization’s network (or even the scientist’s home network). </p>

<p>Normal desktop to cloud latency is about 100ms. Because Coder workspaces are located in the cloud alongside the data sources this latency is essentially zero. One customer reported to us that a database query that used to take forty seconds to execute when run locally, took less than one second when executed from a Coder workspace! </p>

<p>Obviously, results will vary depending on a variety of factors, but in general, users should expect significantly less data latency when using Coder.</p>


With traditional development on local machines, large datasets must traverse long distances during analysis.

Because Coder workspaces reside in the cloud along with your data sources the latency for data transfers is significantly reduced.

<h2>Reduce configuration drift and model deployment issues</h2>

<p>Not all analytical models are intended to be deployed to a production environment, but those that are headed to production depend upon a high degree of environmental consistency as they move from development to testing to production. <a href="https://coder.com/blog/what-is-configuration-drift">Configuration drift</a> occurs when there is any unplanned variance between a system&#39;s expected or recorded state and its actual state. Drift can occur at any point in the pipeline and is the number one cause of failed deployments.</p>

<p>Coder reduces the likelihood of configuration drift by keeping development environments consistent with other environments in the pipeline. Coder encourages the practice of rolling out a new image with new dependencies instead of depending on an engineering manager telling everyone to &quot;make sure to upgrade to Python 3.9.5.&quot; When the production environment changes, all that is required to keep the development environments in line is an update to the workspace Docker image. These changes can then be pushed out to all workspaces created from that image — configuration drift averted for the entire team.</p>

<h2>Building a Coder workspace for data science</h2>

<p>Here is a sample Dockerfile that could be used to build an image that could serve a the foundation for Coder workspaces for data science. It installs Jupyter, PyCharm, RStudio, and code-server for running VS Code. It also includes Python and a variety of commonly used libraries. The original file is <a href="https://github.com/CoderErik/data-science-coder/">available in my repository</a> or you can <a href="https://hub.docker.com/r/codererik/coder-ds-samp">pull it from Docker Hub</a></p>


<pre><code class="yaml">FROM ubuntu:20.04

USER root

# Basic utilities
RUN apt-get update &amp;&amp; DEBIAN_FRONTEND=&quot;noninteractive&quot; apt-get install -y \
    bash \
    build-essential \
    ca-certificates \
    curl \
    docker.io \
    gcc \
    gdebi-core \
    git \
    htop \
    jq \
    locales \
    man \
    net-tools \
    openssl \
    python3 \
    python3-pip \
    r-base \
    rsync \
    software-properties-common \
    ssh \
    sudo \
    systemd \
    systemd-sysv \
    unzip \
    vim \
    wget

# Packages required for multi-editor support
RUN DEBIAN_FRONTEND=&quot;noninteractive&quot; apt-get install -y \
    libxtst6 \
    libxrender1 \
    libfontconfig1 \
    libxi6 \
    libgtk-3-0

# Install python packages
 RUN pip3 install pandas \
    scikit-learn \
    sklearn \
    matplotlib \
    flask \
    django \
    pyyaml \
    scipy \
    keras \
    tensorflow \
    beautifulsoup4 

# Install poetry
RUN curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/python-poetry/poetry/master/get-poetry.py | python3

# Add poetry to path
ENV PATH $PATH:/home/coder/.poetry/bin

# Globally install jupyter
RUN pip3 install jupyterlab

# Install pycharm.
RUN mkdir -p /opt/pycharm
RUN curl -L &quot;https://download.jetbrains.com/product?code=PCC&amp;latest&amp;distribution=linux&quot; | sudo tar -C /opt/pycharm --strip-components 1 -xzvf -


# Add a binary to the PATH that points to the pycharm startup script.
RUN ln -s /opt/pycharm/bin/pycharm.sh /usr/bin/pycharm-community

# Install RStudio
RUN wget https://download2.rstudio.org/server/bionic/amd64/rstudio-server-1.4.1717-amd64.deb &amp;&amp; \
    gdebi --non-interactive rstudio-server-1.4.1717-amd64.deb

# Create coder user
RUN useradd coder \
    --create-home \
    --shell=/bin/bash \
    --uid=1000 \
    --user-group &amp;&amp; \
echo &quot;coder ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL&quot; &gt;&gt;/etc/sudoers.d/nopasswd

# Ensure rstudio files can be written to by the coder user.
RUN chown -R coder:coder /var/lib/rstudio-server
RUN echo &quot;server-pid-file=/tmp/rstudio-server.pid&quot; &gt;&gt; /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf
RUN echo &quot;server-data-dir=/tmp/rstudio&quot; &gt;&gt; /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf

# Assign password &quot;rstudio&quot; to coder user.
RUN echo &#39;coder:rstudio&#39; | chpasswd

# Assign locale
RUN locale-gen en_US.UTF-8

# Add RStudio to path
ENV PATH /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin:${PATH}

# Enables Docker starting with systemd
RUN systemctl enable docker

# go to coder home directory
WORKDIR /home/coder

# Set back to coder user
USER coder
</code></pre>


<h2>Conclusion</h2>

<p>People typically go into data science because they like solving problems with data, not because they enjoy installing Python library dependencies. Companies hire data scientists for the business insights they provide with their analyses. Coder lets data scientists spend their time doing what they enjoy and what the business finds valuable. </p>

<p>To learn more about how Coder can support your company’s data analysis efforts, <a href="https://coder.com/demo">schedule a demo</a> or sign up for a <a href="https://coder.com/trial">sixty-day free trial</a>. </p>


Coder workspaces give data scientists all the tools they need to work and save them the drudgery of setting up and configuring their environments. 

Simplify data science environments with Coder

<p>COVID accelerated a trend to remote work and by all indications, large sectors of the workforce will remain either remote or in some sort of hybrid environment.</p>

<p>Developers are better suited than most to adapt easily to remote work since much of their daily workflow involves accessing remote servers and repositories. </p>

<p>In this guide, we will explore both the opportunities and best practices for any developer who is interested in working remotely.</p>

<h2>The basics of remote development</h2>

<p>Traditionally, developers have run their integrated development environments (IDEs) on their local machines. In the last few years, there has been a growing interest in moving development workspaces and IDEs to the cloud. We’ve written before about some of the <a href="https://coder.com/blog/evolution-of-the-cloud-ide">roadblocks that have prevented more developers from moving to the cloud</a>.</p>

<h2>Benefits of remote development</h2>

<p>We are big proponents of cloud-based development here at Coder and believe that cloud-powered development environments are the best solution for any development team whether co-located, hybrid remote, or fully remote.  </p>

<h3>Connect from anywhere</h3>

<p>With developer workspaces hosted in the cloud, teams can connect from wherever they are physically located. Cloud IDEs and remote desktop solutions (VNC) allow developers to work as securely as they would from the office.</p>

<h3>Use any device</h3>

<p>Because the compute-intensive work like compile and assembly is being done in the cloud, developers can basically use any device (<a href="https://coder.com/blog/i-developed-on-an-ipad-for-two-weeks">even an iPad</a>) to access their workspaces. This can significantly reduce costs for companies since developer workstations tend to be pricey. It also makes “bring your own device” (BYOD) an option, which, depending upon the location of the developer, may be the only option because of regulations governing shipping technologies to certain countries. </p>

<h3>Secure source code</h3>

<p>Although not the case with every cloud-based IDE, with Coder the source code never needs to leave the security of the company’s cloud infrastructure. It remains in the Git repositories and on the Kubernetes cluster where the developer workspaces reside, not on developers’ laptops. </p>

<h2>Best practices for remote developers</h2>

<p>So you’ve got your remote development team in place. You’ve implemented appropriate technological solutions. Here are some best practices that reinforce the benefits of remote models while mitigating the challenges.</p>

<h3>Monitor and update workflows</h3>

<p>You should track productivity among the team as meticulously as you would track code in a product. The point is not to ferret out the less productive. Rather, the need is to explore and identify efficiencies, just as you would in your code. For most of us, remote work is still a relatively new phenomenon. Companies and individuals are still learning. Spot potential issues early, and be willing to adapt and experiment. </p>

<h3>Find ways to stay social</h3>

<p>Building and maintaining rapport among remote team members is undeniably difficult. It is also much easier to fall “out of the loop” when you can no longer overhear conversations taking place in the office. </p>

<p>Schedule regular dialogues between team members to build rapport, reinforce accountability, and make sure everyone has the same info. Be as clear and forthcoming with praise, as well as criticisms.  </p>

<p>At Coder, we’ve found great success with a Slack integration that allows team members to <a href="https://www.heytaco.chat/">give each other digital tacos</a> as a way of saying thank you 🌮🌮🌮. Recipients can redeem their tacos for real items such as cookie delivery, a bottle of wine, company swag, or a massage, but truthfully those rewards are less important than the rapport developed between team members as well as the greater visibility that giving tacos provides into what people are working on across the company. </p>


Giving tacos is a way to say thank you to co-workers while also providing a window into what others are working on  helping everyone stay more conected

<p>Giving tacos is a way to say thank you to co-workers while also providing a window into what others are working on helping everyone stay more connected.</p>

<h3>Lean into collaboration</h3>

<p>Having team members located in vastly different time zones is an opportunity to improve or support a product 24/7 , without anyone working outside of their preferred schedule. Embrace this fact in your daily workflow. Pull requests submitted at the end of a developer’s workday can be reviewed and waiting for them to resume work when they come back online.</p>

<p>And when you’re collaborating with other remote developers from vastly different backgrounds, you’re opening up to a wealth of creative solutions. That’s why creating a remote culture is important to your work. It’s an opportunity to truly work smarter, not harder – so don’t let it pass you by!</p>

<h2>Next steps</h2>

<p>To learn more about how <a href="https://coder.com">Coder</a> can support remote development for your team, <a href="https://coder.com/trial">begin a trial</a> or <a href="https://coder.com/demo">request a demo</a>.</p>


Remote development offers greater autonomy, flexibility, and collaboration to developers. Here are some best practices for anyone who’s developing remotely.

Remote development benefits and best practices

<p>An integrated development environment (IDE) is a suite of applications used by developers for writing and building applications. Typically, an IDE provides a graphical user interface (GUI) and includes:</p>

<ul>
<li>Source code editor: all applications begin with a line of code, and the editor is where the developer writes that code. In its most basic form, this is a text editor, but most editors include features such as syntax highlighting and autocompletion.</li>
<li>Build automation tools: these tools take the written code and, through a series of automated tasks, turn it into code that can be executed and run on a machine. These tasks may encompass several tasks including documentation, testing, compilation, and distribution of the binary software code.</li>
<li>Debugger: a debugger is a tool for identifying errors in the source code. In many cases, this can happen in real-time as the developer is typing. </li>
</ul>

<p>The best IDEs are tightly integrated, allowing developers to work quickly without requiring them to switch between different applications to complete tasks. </p>

<p>Traditionally, developers have run their IDEs on their local machines. In the last few years there has been a growing interest in moving development workspaces and IDEs to the cloud. We’ve written before about some of <a href="https://coder.com/blog/why-cloud-development">the advantages of cloud-based development</a> as well as some of the <a href="https://coder.com/blog/evolution-of-the-cloud-ide">roadblocks that have prevented more developers from moving to the cloud</a>.</p>

<p>In this post, we will lay out some of the fundamental differences between using a local IDE versus a cloud-based IDE and explore some scenarios where you might prefer one over the other. </p>

<h2>What is a local IDE?</h2>

<p>Installing and running your preferred IDE locally is the most common way of working for developers. The current reigning champion of local IDEs is Microsoft Visual Studio. Exact market share numbers are difficult to determine, especially because some surveys lump together Visual Studio and VS Code while others separate them, but estimates suggest that Microsoft controls anywhere from <a href="https://pypl.github.io/IDE.html">28%</a> to over <a href="https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/ide--444">40% of the market</a>. Another common choice is Eclipse, which is primarily used for Java development but which now supports many other languages as well. </p>

<p>To get started using a local IDE, a developer needs to download and install the IDE, which may be as simple as launching a binary file or it may involve many complicated steps and terminal commands. Once the IDE itself is installed, the developer may still need to download and install various libraries and project dependencies. This must be done carefully and with knowledge of the environment where the finished project will run since code that works when tested on the local environment may not perform correctly (or at all) in production environments if the required libraries are mismatched, a situation known as <a href="https://coder.com/blog/what-is-configuration-drift">configuration drift</a>.</p>

<h3>Benefits of using a local IDE</h3>

<h4>Customization</h4>

<p>Many IDEs allow users to install extensions or plugins that add features or tools that support their development workflow. Microsoft’s marketplace currently has almost 11,000 extensions for Visual Studio and over 27,000 for VS Code, allowing users to add support for Python or to deck out their workspace with a Game of Thrones-inspired theme. If you need VS Code to do something that it doesn’t do out of the box, you can likely find an extension that will make it work — or you can build your own custom extension. </p>

<h4>Lots of free and open source options</h4>

<p>There are a ton of local IDE options out there. VS Code certainly owes some of its popularity to being free. Even most of the paid IDEs have a free version that may lack certain functionality (e.g. Eclipse).</p>

<h4>No internet connection required</h4>

<p>Once you have your development environment set up the way you want it, you can unplug and get to work. By their very nature, using a local IDE means that once you have everything set up, you are self-contained with everything you need. Knock out a few hundred lines of code on your next flight without shelling out for the crappy airplane wifi? No problem.</p>

<h3>Pain points of using a local IDE</h3>

<h4>Installing and configuring your environment</h4>

<p>Setting up an environment can take a lot of time. Most developers report taking at least 2-4 hours and sometimes much longer. For developers working in highly regulated industries, it can take weeks. Depending upon the number and nature of projects you work on, you may need to set up a new environment multiple times per year. </p>

<p>This task can be especially daunting for inexperienced developers, and can even be a security risk. I confess — in my past I have copied and pasted commands that I found by Googling problems without fully understanding what the commands would do (other than hopefully fix the problem I was having). </p>

<p>If you are developing software as a hobby, then it doesn’t really matter how long it takes you to set up your environment, and doing so can be a fun and enlightening experience (if sometimes frustrating). But if you are being paid to write code, then your employer would probably rather you spend your time actually writing code, and they certainly don’t want you putting the corporate network at risk by typing in commands that you don’t fully understand. </p>

<h4>Configuration drift</h4>

<p>Environments are not static. There are always security patches that need to be installed, updated libraries that should be evaluated, etc. This is how <a href="https://coder.com/blog/what-is-configuration-drift">configuration drift</a> begins. Someone makes a change to  the production environment and doesn’t effectively communicate and then the next deployment fails even though “it worked on my machine!” Trying to keep large teams in sync is a nightmare when every developer is responsible for configuring and updating their own local development environment.  </p>

<h4>Compute intensity</h4>

<p>Code editors, even the ones that provide autocomplete and syntax highlighting, are essentially text editors and require very little compute power to run. When it comes to assembly and compilation, though, you are going to want to have the beefiest (and hence usually the costliest) machine you can afford. Even mundane tasks like checking email and responding to Slack can become impossible when your CPU is running at 100% because your machine is working hard to compile your code.</p>

<h2>What is a cloud IDE?</h2>

<p>When people think about cloud IDEs they often envision an environment running on a server somewhere and accessed entirely through a browser window. This is indeed the typical model. However, some offerings also allow you to run an editor locally while the other components of the IDE run in the cloud. The distinction is important, but for my purposes here I will consider both to be cloud IDEs. <a href="https://coder.com/blog/what-is-a-cloud-ide">What defines a cloud IDE</a> is where the bulk of the development environment resides, especially the compute-intensive tools for debugging, building, and compiling.</p>

<h3>Benefits and pain points of using a cloud IDE</h3>

<p>To understand the benefits and pain points of using a cloud IDE you can basically take the points above about local IDEs and flip-flop them. </p>

<h4>Pros</h4>

<ul>
<li><p>Imagine having a fully configured developer workspace available in minutes that includes your favorite IDE and all of the environmental configurations that match your production environment. Cloud IDEs make reproducible environments not only possible but easy. At Coder, we had a new hire commit hundreds of lines of new code on their first day because they could onboard immediately.</p></li>
<li><p>With reproducible environments, configuration drift becomes much less of an issue. When development environments are built from an image, a change to that image can be pushed out to the entire team. Everyone stays in sync.</p></li>
<li><p>With cloud IDEs the cloud does the heavy lifting of assembly and compilation which means that the developer doesn’t require a maxed-out personal workstation. When one of Coder’s engineers had to send his laptop in for repair <a href="https://coder.com/blog/i-developed-on-an-ipad-for-two-weeks">he used an iPad to continue working for two weeks</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>You can continue to use the same IDEs you prefer locally, except in the cloud. This is not true in all cases — some companies have built their cloud IDE offering from scratch. Others, like Coder and Gitpod, use VS Code as their default IDE experience, letting developers continue using the tools they already love, just powered by the cloud.</p></li>
</ul>

<h4>Cons</h4>

<ul>
<li><p>With cloud IDEs, you may have to give up some ability to customize your environment — although <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/v1.19/workspaces/personalization">perhaps not as much as you might expect</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>There are fewer open source and free solutions. If the IDE is gonna live in the cloud someone needs to pay the cloud costs. There are some open source options that you can install on your own cloud-based server, including our own <a href="https://github.com/cdr/code-server">code-server project</a>, but you’ll need to foot the bill for the cloud services. There are also some free cloud IDEs, but they usually are limited to working on other paid services such as Cloud 9 on AWS or CodeReady Workspaces on RedHat’s OpenShift platform.</p></li>
<li><p>Some cloud “IDEs” are really little more than glorified text editors and lack the features that developers have come to expect from their IDEs.</p></li>
<li><p>Today it is necessary that you have an internet connection to use your cloud IDE. But conversely, if you have an internet connection you’ll be able to access your environment wherever you are. Want to spend a week working from a Caribbean resort? No problem. At a party and you get a PagerDuty alert? Hop onto your friend’s computer and access your environment.  Of course, you would never go to a party if you were on call, so this example probably doesn’t apply. </p></li>
</ul>

<h2>Use cases: Local vs cloud IDE</h2>

<p>So which is right for you? It depends on your situation and what challenges you face, but here are a few suggestions.</p>

<h3>Remote teams</h3>

<p>The COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated the trend toward remote work and work from home. With a widely dispersed workforce, ensuring that everyone is using the same version of required libraries becomes even more difficult. In some cases, engineers may be using their own personal devices rather than company-issued equipment. In instances like this, having a centralized cloud IDE makes a lot of sense — engineers can connect to their environments from anywhere using any device, and the environments are easily reproducible.</p>

<p><strong>Use case best served by: Cloud IDE</strong></p>

<h3>Limited broadband</h3>

<p>Some of us are used to having enterprise-level broadband at the office and gigabit connections at home. But many others must deal with spotty connectivity and limited bandwidth, especially when working from home. And even in the United States, there are still many areas where broadband is simply not available. In such cases, developers may be more productive by having their workspace self-contained and not dependent upon their internet service provider.</p>

<p><strong>Use case best served by: Local IDE</strong></p>

<h3>Gig workforce</h3>

<p>Contingent workers make up a significant portion of the software development workforce. If your company employs a lot of contract workers for your software development needs then <a href="https://coder.com/blog/four-ways-coder-helps-manage-contractors">using a cloud IDE can significantly reduce the onboarding time as well as enable a bring your own device policy</a> and save your company money. </p>

<p><strong>Use case best served by: Cloud IDE</strong></p>

<h3>Hardware limitations</h3>

<p>If your personal devices are underpowered or otherwise limited running an IDE locally may not even be possible. This is where having a cloud-based IDE really excels. A Chromebook is fine for typing out your code and commands, but having your IDE actually running on a server that can burst up and provide you with whatever power you need when you need it can’t be beaten. </p>

<p><strong>Use case best served by: Cloud IDE</strong></p>

<h3>Customized editor preferences</h3>

<p>Developers can be picky about their workspaces and workflows. Most local IDEs can’t be beaten for their ability to be customized. Some cloud IDEs offer little or no ability to customize your workspace, others, however, allow a great deal of customization. In this case, it really depends on which specific IDE you are using. </p>

<p><strong>Use case best served by: either, depending on which product you are using</strong></p>

<h2>Conclusion</h2>

<p>Both local and cloud IDEs have distinctive advantages and disadvantages. What works best for you depends upon your situation and needs. </p>

<p>If you would like to explore the potential for cloud-based IDEs in your workflow, try out our open-source project, code-server, to host VS Code on a server and access it anywhere remotely from the browser. We are also currently offering <a href="https://coder.com/trial">a two-month free trial of Coder</a>, our enterprise product that builds upon code-server and adds features designed for teams including support for additional 10+ IDEs and advanced security features.</p>


We lay out some of the fundamental differences between using a local IDE versus a cloud-based IDE and explore some scenarios where you might prefer one over the other. 

Cloud IDE vs local IDE: Understanding the differences

<p>As developers grow more interested in remote development and configuration as code, cloud-based integrated development environments (IDEs) show a lot of promise. Yet hardly any developers are using cloud IDEs.</p>

<p>So what exactly is an IDE? How do the cloud IDE options available today differ from local developer environments? And why should more developers consider using them, more so now than ever before?</p>

<p>This blog will explain the basics.</p>

<h2>What is an IDE?</h2>

<p>IDEs typically consist of at least a code editor and tools for debugging and building and have historically been built to be installed and configured on
individual machines.</p>

<p>Most software now has some cloud component, either the app running
entirely on the web (e.g. Google Docs, Salesforce, etc.) or more
commonly using the web for distribution and installation. Despite this
trend, <strong>software is still typically <em>written</em> on individual laptops and
workstations</strong> in local development environments configured by the
developer. </p>

<h2>What is a cloud IDE?</h2>

<p><strong>What defines acloud IDE is where the bulk of the development environment resides, especially the compute-intensive tools for debugging, building, and compiling.</strong></p>

<p>When people usually think about cloud IDEs they envision an environment
running on a server somewhere and accessed entirely through a browser
window. This is indeed the typical model. However, some offerings also
allow you to run an editor locally while the other components of the IDE
run in the cloud. The distinction is important, as we will see, but for
my purposes here I will consider both to be cloud IDEs. </p>

<h3>Two approaches to cloud IDEs</h3>

<p>There are two general approaches to creating a cloud IDE: </p>

<ul>
<li>Create an entirely new IDE, which only runs in the cloud</li>
<li>Take an existing IDE originally designed for running locally and move it to the cloud</li>
</ul>

<h4>IDEs that run exclusively in the cloud</h4>

<p>This is the approach of Codeanywhere and <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/">Cloud9</a>, two of the first cloud IDEs. The primary advantage of this approach is all components of the IDE can be deeply integrated because the product is cloud-native. The primary drawback is that users must adopt a toolset with which they may not be familiar, and developers are often fiercely loyal to their preferred workflows.</p>

<h4>Moving a local IDE into the cloud</h4>

<p>This is the approach of <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-server">code-server</a>, the open source project that we maintain, and <a href="https://github.com/features/codespaces">GitHub Codespaces</a>, both of which allow developers to run VS Code remotely and access it through a browser. </p>

<p>Commercial products using this approach often support multiple editors accessed through the browser. <a href="https://www.gitpod.io/">Gitpod</a> users have a choice of VS Code or Eclipse Theia, for instance, while our own product <a href="https://coder.com/">Coder</a> supports VS Code and any JetBrains-based editor. A major advantage to this &quot;adapt for the cloud&quot; approach is that developer adoption is typically easier since the environments include toolsets with which they are intimately familiar.</p>

<h2>Benefits of using a cloud IDE</h2>

<p>For individuals and organizations willing to make the move to a cloud
IDE, there are some significant advantages over traditional localhost
development.</p>

<h3>Less setup effort</h3>

<p>Most developers spend <a href="https://www.activestate.com/resources/white-papers/developer-survey-2019-open-source-runtime-pains/">between 2-8 hours, and sometimes more</a>, setting up a new dev environment locally. With cloud IDEs developers are typically logging into an existing online editor or launching
environments as containers from existing images. They can <a href="https://coder.com/blog/create-cloud-dev-environments-in-5-minutes-with-coder">begin coding
in minutes</a>, if not instantly.</p>

<h3>Remote access</h3>

<p>When your IDE is in the cloud you are no longer tied to your individual
machine. Want to spend a week working from a tropical island instead of
the office? No problem. Your laptop in the shop for repairs and you only
have a tablet available? <a href="https://coder.com/blog/i-developed-on-an-ipad-for-two-weeks">It&#39;s still possible to write code on an iPad,
too</a>.
In most cases, all you need is an internet connection and a browser. Of
course, if your tropical island lacks internet connectivity you are
better off coding on your laptop, but you&#39;d probably be even better off
closing your laptop and enjoying the views.</p>

<h3>Standardized workspaces</h3>

<p>With cloud IDEs, developers no longer need to build and configure a
development environment on their personal machines. This saves them
time, ensures that all team members on a project are working with the
same environmental settings, and can <a href="https://coder.com/blog/what-is-configuration-drift">reduce configuration
drift</a> as a
result.</p>

<h3>Reduced build times</h3>

<p>Developers spend a great deal of time waiting, waiting for builds to
compile, for tests to run, for applications to deploy and load, etc.
With a cloud IDE, those times are typically reduced because rather than
depending upon the resources of the developer&#39;s own machine the IDE is
tapping into the resources of its cloud infrastructure.</p>

<h3>Reduced personal hardware requirements</h3>

<p>Because the compute is handled by the cloud, developers don&#39;t require
high-powered machines themselves. As mentioned above, it even becomes
possible to code using a tablet. For businesses, this translates into
<a href="https://coder.com/blog/symphony-ayasdiai-customer-spotlight">cost savings as they can provide less expensive hardware for their
employees</a>.
Companies could even implement BYOD (bring your own device) policies
when utilizing contractors and other temporary workers.</p>

<h3>Facilitates collaboration</h3>

<p>Cloud IDEs also foster collaboration with some offerings permitting pair
programming or even live collaborative editing as with Google docs. Some
cloud IDEs also make it easier for developers to share the applications
they are developing while in progress.</p>

<h2>Concerns about Cloud IDEs</h2>

<p>There are <a href="https://coder.com/blog/evolution-of-the-cloud-ide">many reasons why developers have been slow to embrace cloud-based IDEs</a>, some of which we have written about before from our past experience.</p>

<h3>Latency</h3>

<p>Latency is probably the single most cited concern about cloud IDEs from
developers. As one developer <a href="https://thenewstack.io/cloud-ides-have-a-wow-factor-but-for-developers-its-just-different/">put
it</a>,
&quot;If you have fingers that walk on water, even the slightest blip is
noticeable and drives you nuts.&quot; Certainly, if you have ever tried to
use a VDI or remote desktop you have likely experienced the kind of
keystroke lag that drives users mad.</p>

<p>However, most cloud IDEs like code-server use web elements instead of
streaming an image back to the local device. <strong>This eliminates the need
for a round-trip from the user&#39;s keyboard to server and back to the user for
text to appear on the user&#39;s screen</strong>.</p>

<h3>Having to adopt a new workflow</h3>

<p><a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/11/09/modern-ide-vs-vim-emacs/">&quot;Developers are a finicky bunch,&quot; wrote John Biggs and Ryan Donovan</a> on the Stackoverflow blog.&quot;Like a dog refusing to walk on wet grass, there always seemed to be a bit of resistance to changing up a routine.&quot; Briggs and Donovan were
writing about the surprisingly large number of developers who still prefer Vim and Emacs over modern IDEs. The fact that Biggs and Donovan could write that post in late 2020 exemplifies the resistance many developers have to moving to a cloud IDE.</p>

<p>The most successful cloud IDEs in terms of adoption over the coming few
years will certainly be the ones that allow developers to continue using
the tools and workflows they already love while also easily
demonstrating how using them in the cloud is better.</p>

<h3>Vendor Lock-in</h3>

<p>If you want to adopt Codespaces as your cloud IDE then you are limited
to using GitHub for version control. If you want to use CodeReady, then
you have a choice of Git repositories, but you are committing to running
OpenShift on Red Hat Enterprise. After being purchased by Amazon, Cloud9
is now only available on AWS.</p>

<p>Vendor lock-in is more of a concern for businesses than individual
developers. However, with many organizations taking a hybrid and/or
multi-cloud approach to their computing needs, vendor lock-in is a major
consideration when picking any cloud-based service, including a cloud
IDE. </p>

<p><strong>If vendor lock-in is a concern, then businesses would best be
served by looking at cloud IDE offerings that are not projects of
companies whose primary revenue stream is another product or service
that comes as a package deal when using the cloud IDE</strong>. Both Coder and
Gitpod meet this criterion. Such offerings are also more likely to
support multiple editors through the browser, as well as multiple Git
repositories and deployment on a variety of cloud providers or even
on-premises installations.</p>

<h2>Next steps</h2>

<p>If you would like more information about the advantages to be gained by
moving software development to the cloud, as well as how to overcome
resistance to such a change within your own organization, <a href="https://coder.com/whitepapers/software-development-in-the-cloud-how-to-get-there">check out our
playbook &quot;Software Development in the Cloud: How to Get
There</a>.&quot;</p>

<p>If you would like to see how Coder moves developer workspaces to your
cloud while providing a superior developer experience, <a href="https://coder.com/demo">request a
demo</a> or <a href="https://coder.com/trial">sign up for a free trial</a>.</p>


Learn about cloud IDEs – integrated development environments built, managed, and run directly from the cloud.

What is a Cloud IDE?

<p>If you&#39;ve ever heard an engineer lamenting (or sometimes arrogantly proclaiming) &quot;well, it works on my machine&quot; then you have been witness to configuration drift. </p>

<p>In some cases, drift may have no impact on the daily performance of a system. In other cases, it can cause instability or even total service outages. (Configuration drift is often the root cause of deployment failures.)</p>

<p>While the latter scenarios are the ones that DevOps teams usually dread, as I&#39;ll show later, drift that goes unnoticed can sometimes wreak the most havoc on an organization.</p>

<h2>How configuration drift works</h2>

<p>As software production and delivery systems grow more complex, the opportunities for drift increase. Code moves from a developer&#39;s workstation to a shared dev environment, then to test and QA environments, and finally to staging and production environments. </p>

<p>The further along in the pipeline that drift occurs, the greater the potential impact. Typically only staging and production are intended to be exact replicas of each other, but even differences between the version of a package version installed on a developer&#39;s laptop and the version installed on a test server can cause delays as problems are debugged. With many companies now deploying new code multiple times per day, the pressure is intense.</p>


<h2>Common causes of configuration drift</h2>

<p>Each step of the CI/CD pipeline presents multiple opportunities for drift to occur. There are, however, a few common culprits. </p>

<h3>Poor communication</h3>

<p>I once worked in the data warehouse for a national grocery store.  With data entering the warehouse from dozens of different source systems, it was not uncommon for a structural change in the data from an upstream system to cause problems in the downstream reporting. The changes were often intentional, but the upstream teams had failed to communicate with their downstream partners about the impending change and the downstream systems broke as a result.</p>

<p><strong>Takeaway</strong> </p>

<p><em>Even carefully planned changes can cause drift in highly complex integrated systems if all impacted parties are not informed or included in the planning.</em></p>

<h3>Hotfixes</h3>

<p>Hotfixes are code changes made to address an immediate problem that cannot wait for the next planned release. To understand how they can result in configuration drift, let&#39;s return to the data warehouse scenario where the upstream changes are now causing problems downstream. VPs are hitting refresh on their Tableau reports and growing impatient. Emails and chat messages are flying.</p>

<p>In such situations, warehouse data engineers would often make hotfixes on the production server — modifying the DDL or reporting queries in real-time to make the reports behave as expected. After solving the problem, the weary engineers sometimes failed to document and make the same fixes to the other environments in the warehouse&#39;s CI/CD pipeline – thus sending the production server into a state of drift. Often, this drift would be discovered only after pushing a subsequent code update from staging to production, overwriting the hotfix and reintroducing the original problem.</p>

<p><strong>Takeaway</strong> </p>

<p><em>Hotfixes are often performed under intense pressure, and by its very nature, the work falls outside of standard procedures, creating a perfect storm for configuration drift.</em> </p>

<h3>Critical package updates</h3>

<p>Critical security updates are close cousins with hotfixes. Both are often performed at breakneck speeds without adherence to normal procedures. The primary difference is that hotfixes are applied to fix an immediate problem, while critical package updates are applied in hopes of avoiding a future incident.</p>

<p><strong>Takeaway</strong></p>

<p><em>It bears repeating that work performed under intense pressure that doesn&#39;t follow standard procedures is a breeding ground for configuration drift.</em> </p>

<h3>Lack of automation</h3>

<p>Modern CI/CD pipelines typically include built-in checks for errors and tests. The move to the cloud and infrastructure as code paradigms allow us to replicate systems and scale out existing systems with ease. Infrastructure as code inherently provides a record of current and previous configuration, eliminating the problem of failing to document planned changes. As we will see, configuration management tools can spot and sometimes stop configuration drift before it becomes a problem.</p>

<p>This is the vision.</p>

<p>However, in most cases, reality differs from the ideal. Many organizations have a hybrid architecture consisting of mutable and automatable cloud resources and legacy systems that are immutable and continue to function thanks only the esoteric knowledge of a select few sysadmin wizards whose work cannot be automated because it has never been documented in the first place. Or the applications are running on antiquated hardware and can&#39;t be ported to the cloud.</p>

<p><strong>Takeaway</strong></p>

<p><em>You can&#39;t automate away configuration drift, but without automation you&#39;ll have a lot more of it.</em></p>

<h3>Convenience changes</h3>

<p>Many changes are meant to be temporary. A sysadmin grants a developer elevated permissions to troubleshoot a problem. Someone installs a new package on a test server to try out its new functionality. Bucket permissions are changed in order to share a file quickly with a teammate. When these changes are not reverted to their original state drift occurs.</p>

<p><strong>Takeaway</strong></p>

<p><em>Not all change is drift, but once a change is forgotten it may become drift.</em></p>

<h2>The costs of configuration drift</h2>

<p>The most commonly listed consequences of configuration drift are lost productivity and downtime as engineers troubleshoot code and environments, trying to identify the cause of the unexpected behavior.</p>

<p>Unplanned downtime is undeniably costly, though how costly is a matter of debate. A <a href="https://blogs.gartner.com/andrew-lerner/2014/07/16/the-cost-of-downtime/">commonly cited Gartner report estimates</a> that on average each minute of unexpected downtime costs a company $5600. Published in 2014, this report is now dated and has <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=the+costs+of+downtime&oq=the+costs+of+downtime">spawned a small industry of posts</a> offering updated and refined calculations.</p>

<h3>The stakeholder effect</h3>

<p>More recently, though, Gartner senior analyst David Gregory suggested that <a href="http://cdn.computerworld.com.au/article/660959/business-leaders-don-t-care-about-cost-downtime/">trying to pin a dollar figure on downtime misses the broader picture</a>.</p>

<blockquote>"I&O [Infrastructure and operations] leaders often try to leverage information from various sources about how much an outage will cost per hour. Instead, focus on impacts to stakeholders of the business — the end users or the individual business operations leaders — and how those outcomes are directly impacted by the loss of IT services."</blockquote>

<p>The same argument applies to understanding the costs of configuration drift. <strong>We need to move beyond thinking that the primary impact is limited to the DevOps team and think more about the implications for a broad range of stakeholders.</strong></p>

<h3>Examples of configuration drift that led to security breaches</h3>

<p>The consequences of configuration drift go far beyond frustrated engineers, delayed deployments, and unplanned downtime. The security threats and potential damage to both companies and their customers are immense and not to be taken lightly.</p>

<p>Here are two major examples.</p>

<p><strong>Twilio and the hotfix configuration drift</strong></p>

<p>In July 2020, the cloud communications company Twilio announced that hackers had exploited a misconfigured S3 bucket and replaced a Javascript library used by its customers with a modified version capable of skimming personal data.</p>

<p>In a very detailed (and to be applauded) <a href="https://www.twilio.com/blog/incident-report-taskrouter-js-sdk-july-2020">incident report</a> posted to their blog, Twilio identified the root cause of the intrusion to be a change made to the bucket configuration while troubleshooting an earlier problem. After applying the hotfix, the engineer working the problem failed to roll the bucket&#39;s configuration back to its original secure settings, and configuration drift ensued. Interestingly, the misconfiguration remained undetected for over four years before the breach occurred.</p>

<p>While Twilio identified the root cause of the breach and remediated it fairly quickly with limited impact, other companies haven&#39;t been as fortunate. </p>

<p><strong>British Airways and the stolen credit card numbers</strong></p>

<p>Hackers applying the same techniques used in the Twilio incident also breached British Airways systems and stole the personal information and credit card numbers of almost a half-million customers.</p>

<p>As a result of their lapse, the company was fined £183.39 million ($229.2 million) under GDPR regulations, the largest fine ever accessed at the time. Stock prices of British Airways&#39; parent company tumbled in the weeks and months following the disclosure of the breach. </p>


<h2>How to <s>prevent</s> manage configuration drift</h2>

<p>Configuration drift is, unfortunately, probably inevitable given the current CI/CD pipeline. With the push for continuous delivery, hotfixes and critical package updates will continue to be deployed inconsistently. And then there is always just good old human error.</p>

<p>Eliminating configuration drift is a fool&#39;s errand.</p>

<p>Instead, you should approach drift through the paradigms used to manage risks: reduce the probability that the assumed risks actually materialize and improve the company&#39;s ability to manage or contain the risk events should they occur. </p>

<p>To manage configuration drift focus on a three-part strategy that attempts to:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Reduce</p></li>
<li><p>Detect</p></li>
<li><p>Remediate</p></li>
</ul>

<h3>How to reduce configuration drift</h3>

<p>While it may be impossible to prevent configuration drift, you can certainly reduce its frequency.</p>

<p><strong>Set clear rules</strong></p>

<p>As outlined above in the causes of configuration drift, human error is often the true culprit, whether by failing to follow established change management procedures or by failing to communicate and plan effectively. Of course, no one can follow rules that do not exist. If your organization does not have them, then <strong>clearly defined change management policies and procedures must be your first priority.</strong></p>

<p><strong>Automate</strong></p>

<p>The next step is to <strong>automate as much as possible</strong>. The DORA and Google Cloud report cited earlier found that the organizations with the lowest rates of failed deployments also had the highest rates of automation. A single CloudFormation script can configure and launch dozens or hundreds of servers on AWS all configured exactly the same and that can, therefore, be counted on to run your code exactly the same way in production.</p>

<p>Organizations should <strong>also look to automate the beginning of the pipeline</strong> — the creation and management of developers&#39; workspaces. Traditionally, developers have configured their own workstations with the tools and libraries necessary for a project. As a result, these machines are particularly prone to drift and misconfiguration. Changes to staging and production environments are inconsistently communicated to the developers at the opposite end of the pipeline.</p>

<p><strong>Pre-configure developer workspaces</strong></p>

<p>Developer workspaces need to match the configuration of the production environments where their code will eventually reside, otherwise, problems will eventually arise. With dozens or hundreds of developers working on a particular project, the traditional method of having each developer be responsible for configuring their own workspace is simply not sustainable.</p>

<p>A better solution is to <strong>automate the creation of developer workspaces from pre-configured images</strong> that match the configuration of the higher environments and contain all the tools and libraries necessary for the project. This approach brings the infrastructure-as-code paradigm to the beginning of the pipeline.</p>

<h3>How to detect configuration drift</h3>

<p>Probably the most common method of detecting when configuration drift has occurred, unfortunately, is breaking something. Clearly, not ideal.</p>

<p>A proactive, systematic approach to detecting configuration drift requires two things: </p>

<ul>
<li>documentation of a system&#39;s intended state</li>
<li>regular auditing of its current state</li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Management tools</strong></p>

<p>Configuration management tools and services such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible, AWS Config, and Google&#39;s Cloud Asset Inventory automate the process. These tools continuously monitor your resources, record any configuration changes, and send alerts as needed.</p>

<p><strong>Manual audits</strong></p>

<p>Organizations should also regularly conduct manual audits as well, though. Configuration management tools can only detect changes in systems that they have been configured to monitor. In today&#39;s complex multi-cloud and hybrid environments knowing the totality of your assets can be a challenge in itself.</p>

<h3>How to remediate configuration drift</h3>

<p>Once detected drift must be corrected. In the case of the Twilio breach, they only had to change the permissions on the bucket and replace the corrupted file with a backup from before the breach. Detailed logs made it possible to identify when the breach occurred and automated backups ensured they had a clean version of the file to restore.</p>

<p><strong>Roll changes back</strong></p>

<p>Deployments can be automated and configured to roll back changes at the first signs of failure, reducing or even eliminating downtime, though it may take some human detective work to figure out why the problem occurred.</p>

<p>Many configuration management tools and services tools take a proactive approach to remediating drift. After detecting a change, they can automatically restore the system to the last documented intended state. Be careful, though, before enabling such automation — if the drift resulted from an undocumented hotfix or critical package update you could be restoring the system to an unstable or insecure state.</p>


<h3>How Coder can help reduce configuration drift</h3>

<p>At Coder, we help your organization manage the risk of configuration drift by moving developer workspaces to the cloud and automating their creation and orchestration. </p>

<p><strong>Remote workspaces</strong></p>

<p>Our product lets you define developer workspaces as code and spin up new environments quickly and securely. Developers can access the workspaces remotely through a browser. No more need to spend hours or days configuring their workstation or VDI. Developers can literally <a href="https://coder.com/blog/create-cloud-dev-environments-in-5-minutes-with-coder">create new workspaces in less than five minutes</a> and start writing code almost immediately.</p>

<p><strong>Easy updates</strong></p>

<p>Coder encourages the practice of rolling out a new image with new dependencies instead of depending on an engineering manager telling everyone to &quot;make sure to upgrade to Python 3.5.3.&quot; When the production environment changes, all that is required is an update to the workspace Docker image. These changes can then be pushed out to all workspaces created from that image — configuration drift averted for the entire team throughout the entire pipeline.</p>

<h2>Next steps</h2>

<p>As with any other risk, drift cannot be eliminated entirely. Instead, it must be managed to reduce its probability and contain its impact when it does occur.</p>

<p>Automation is one key component to reducing the occurrence of drift as well as detecting and correcting it. </p>

<p>To learn more about how Coder can help your organization reduce the risk of costly and dangerous configuration drift, <a href="https://coder.com/demo">schedule a demo today</a>.</p>


Configuration drift can slow down your development process, or bring your product crashing down. Learn what it is, how it works, and how you can manage it.

What is configuration drift?

<p>What happens when you give employees a day to work on whatever they want to work on rather than what they have been assigned? </p>

<p>The Coder hackathon, and a lot of cool projects.</p>

<p>On a recent Friday, we gave those who wanted the opportunity a chance to spend the day hacking. Participants could work solo or in teams and the only stipulation was that the project had to be related to Coder. The following Monday the hackers presented their projects at an all-hands meeting and an impartial panel of non-participants judged the results. </p>

<p>Some of the ideas may eventually be incorporated into our products and workflows. Others...well, not likely. But it was great fun to see everyone’s creativity and ingenuity.</p>

<p>Here’s a peek at what folks worked on. </p>

<h2>Coder + Alexa integration</h2>

<p>A few weeks ago when we were internally demoing <a href="https://coder.com/docs/environments/autostart">Coder’s new autostart feature</a>, someone made a joke about “Alexa, start my environment.” That may be the reason that we had not one but two people inspired to make that happen, each working independently. Faris Huskovic is a backend software engineer who championed the backend portion of the autostart feature. For the hackathon, he bought an Amazon Echo to interface with Coder using an Alexa skill he wrote in Go and deployed as an AWS Lambda function. Erik Bledsoe is a writer on the marketing team and utilized Coder’s API in his efforts. Here&#39;s a demo of Faris triggering a voice-activated cloud environment build.</p>


Gecko demo

<p>Faris&#39;s code and instructions for how you can rebuild your environment with Alexa are <a href="https://github.com/fuskovic/gecko">available on his GitHub repository</a>.</p>

<h2>Using Coder for recruitment tech assignments</h2>

<p>Web developer Bruno Quaresma envisions a system for tech recruiting that works on top of Coder. Candidates would be able to log into the system and complete assignments that measure their programming skills using workspaces that are uniformly configured for all applicants. Administrators would be able to create assignments and evaluate results. Camilla Lever who handles Coder’s recruiting efforts was VERY excited by Bruno’s project.</p>

<p>Here Bruno walks us through the experience for the recruiter. </p>


Bruno Quaresma's Hackathon Project

<h2>Simple CLI install on Google Cloud</h2>

<p>As Coder’s developer advocate (and star of <a href="https://community.coder.com/coffee-and-coder">Coffee and Coder</a>), Ben Potter spends a good part of his time pushing us to always keep the developer’s needs in mind. It is little wonder, then, that for his project he wanted to make installing Coder as easy as possible. </p>

<p>Using NodeJS, Ben created a CLI that with a <a href="https://github.com/bpmct/launch-coder">single command</a> and a few prompt confirmations lets you use Google Cloud’s built-in web shell to configure and install Coder. In addition to the basic installation, it also can create a domain and install your TLS certificate so that your dev URLs work seamlessly. </p>

<p>Here’s Ben walking us through his work.</p>


<h2>A hidden game</h2>

<p>Coder’s head designer Clint Kadera led a team consisting of fellow designer Jeb Milling, Eric Paulsen from our customer success team, and senior software engineer Grey Barkans. In the lead-up to the hackathon, Clint also led everyone in trash talking. </p>

<p>The team dubbed themselves the Hash Slinging Slashers and they mocked up a game called The Platformer that would be triggered in the very unlikely event that a visitor to our website encountered the 404 page. Built upon the <a href="https://github.com/starzonmyarmz/js13k-2018/projects/1">open source OnOff game</a> with audio from <a href="https://howlerjs.com/">Howler.js</a>, the game follows BoBo as he navigates the dangers of Tech City.</p>


<p>And of course, it has a dark mode.</p>


<h2>Avoiding bundle bloat</h2>

<p>Kevin Lint is a senior software engineer who started with us in January and primarily works on the frontend implementing UI/UX for Coder. Kevin identified a syntactical issue that was affecting our bundle size. Basically, we too often were using top-level core imports rather than path imports, which resulted in pulling in unused modules. Kevin’s solution was two-pronged. First, he wrote a VS Code snippet that lets a developer use a shortcut that formats the inputs in the most efficient way possible. Next, he modified our ESLint file to check for the old inefficient usage and if found will fail the check and point the developer to the proper documentation. </p>


<p>GUI for Coder installation
Senior software engineer Jonathan Yu set out to make Coder more accessible to people that are not very familiar with Kubernetes or container technologies. His goal was to create a graphical install experience so that a user could download a single Go binary, run it, and have it guide them through the settings relevant to their use case (essentially configuring the stuff that goes into the values.yaml file, providing interactive advice and validation, etc).</p>

<p>Jonathan didn’t get as far along with his project as he hoped, so don’t expect us to roll out a GUI install next week, but when we do it certainly will be informed by the principles of progressive disclosure that Jonathan’s work demonstrated.</p>


Hackathon Jonathan's Project

<h2>Style guide</h2>

<p>Katie Horne is a product writer on Coder’s customer success team and is the primary force behind our docs. Inconsistencies in the way we present some of our content was getting under her skin, so she created a style guide. You will soon notice that we are much more consistent when we write about our products and their features like <del>DevURLs</del> <del>Dev URL’s</del> dev URLs.</p>

<h2>And the winner is...</h2>

<p>Bruno Quaresma for his Coder as tech recruitment platform. Congratulations! 🎉</p>

<p>There were several other winners in various categories, but Bruno’s vision of a new way to use Coder and the beautiful UI he created it for simply wowed the judges and earned him best of show.</p>

<h2>In closing</h2>

<p>We hope you have enjoyed this peek behind the scenes at Coder and getting to meet some of the Coders (Coderers? Coderians? Coderists? Codiatrists???? @Katie we need a new entry in the style guide).</p>

<p>A special thank you to Ben Potter for organizing the hackathon and emceeing the presentation session, Marcie Zimmerman for arranging for the snacks that fueled us and the prizes for the winners, and to the leadership for not only permitting it but also encouraging it. </p>

<h2>What’s your hack?</h2>

<p>Have you done something with Coder or code-server that is cool? Let us know about it on Twitter @coderhq </p>


A peek behind the scenes from the Coder team's recent hackathon. 

The Coder hackathon

<p>Whether they are called contractors, freelancers, or contingent workers, non-permanent workers hired on a per-project basis make up a significant portion of many organizations. A study conducted in the summer of 2020 and released in the fall by Upwork found that <a href="https://www.upwork.com/releases/new-upwork-study-finds-36-of-the-us-workforce-freelance-amid-the-covid-19-pandemic">over 59 million Americans, or 36% of the U.S. workforce, had participated in the gig economy</a> during the preceding 12 months, an increase of over two million workers from the previous year. The numbers are expected to increase in the coming years.</p>

<p>While the study did not provide details about the specific types of work conducted, the prevalence of contractors in software engineering is easy to see. At any given moment, more than 10% of the <a href="https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=software+engineer&l=anywhere">software development positions listed on Indeed</a> are for contract or temporary positions. In 2019 when Upwork released a <a href="https://www.upwork.com/press/releases/the-upwork-100-q3-2019">list of the 100 most in-demand skills for freelancers</a>, specific programming languages were numbers 1 and 2 on the list. </p>

<p>Over the past few months, several of our customers have provided feedback that Coder is particularly well suited to helping them manage their contractor workforce. We thought we’d share a few of their insights.</p>

<h2>1: Faster onboarding</h2>

<p>Software engineers hired on contract typically possess specific skill sets needed to solve particular problems for an organization. These abilities usually come at a premium for the organization--every billable hour spent configuring a dev environment rather than writing code in that environment is money wasted for the organization.</p>

<p>Coder allows developers to <a href="https://coder.com/blog/create-cloud-dev-environments-in-5-minutes-with-coder">spin up reproducible development environments in minutes</a>, fully configured with all the required dependencies and exactly the same as the environments used by all the other team members working on the project. There is no time and money wasted inquiring about which version of Node.js is running in production or which Python libraries are available for use. When <a href="https://coder.com/blog/onboard-to-new-projects-faster-with-codetour">Coder is used in conjunction with a product like CodeTour</a> that helps developers understand a codebase, contractors can start contributing on day one, not in a week or two.</p>

<h2>2: Reduced equipment costs</h2>

<p>Many companies provide workstations for their contractors. While that often makes sense for on-site workers, for an increasingly remote workforce it’s a more difficult case to make. Shipping laptops adds expense, logistical complexity, and even potential security risks since shipped packages could be intercepted before arrival. </p>

<p>With Coder, developer workspaces reside within containers in the company’s cloud infrastructure. Developers do not need powerful workstations for compilation and assembly. If they need additional compute power they can spin up a new workspace(with the exact same environmental configuration of their previous underpowered one) in moments. </p>

<p>With powerful, secure developer workspaces in the cloud, companies no longer need to provide powerful laptops for developers--relatively inexpensive Macbook Airs or Chromebooks would suffice, <a href="https://coder.com/blog/symphony-ayasdiai-customer-spotlight">even for permanent employees</a>. In the case of remote contractors, it would be easy to finally move to a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) approach, completely eliminating additional equipment costs.</p>

<h2>3: Less need for VPN</h2>

<p>Let’s just say it. VPN is a pain, both for those who have to manage it and for those who have to use it to access the resources they need. </p>

<p>Coder lets developers access remote developer workspaces securely through an encrypted browser session or through SecureShell “SSH” — no need for VPN. Coder ties into your SSO provider and can be configured for multi-factor authentication.  In many cases, allowing contractors access to a company’s VPN simply creates an unnecessary security risk, allowing them inside a company’s network and potentially granting them access to systems they have no business need to access. Many companies are <a href="https://coder.com/whitepapers/zero-trust-security-for-software-development-teams">adopting a zero-trust approach to network security</a>, which would mitigate this risk, but such implementations are still relatively rare. </p>

<p>If a contractor has been hired just to write code, Coder lets them do so without exposing the rest of the company’s systems unnecessarily. </p>

<h2>4: Customer data and source code are secure</h2>

<p>Issuing laptops to employees and contractors means the company is taking on the risk that customer data and source code are properly secured. By moving development environments to your cloud infrastructure, customer data and source code move with it  — effectively preventing mass exfiltration of precious and confidential data. Coder lets companies demonstrate to their customers that their data is secure, and will not be lost or stolen.</p>

<h2>Want to Learn More?</h2>

<p>These are a few of the anecdotes that our customers have shared with us. If you would like to learn more about how Coder can help your organization manage its contractors <a href="https://coder.com/demo">schedule a demo</a>. Or if you prefer a more hands-on approach, <a href="https://coder.com/trial">sign up for a free trial</a>. </p>


Over the past few months, several of our customers have provided feedback that Coder is particularly well suited to helping them manage their contractor workforce. We thought we’d share a few of their insights.

Four ways Coder helps companies manage software development contractors

<p>Chris Kacerguis is an affable guy with an easy grin, a second-degree black belt, and two dozen years of experience writing software, designing systems, and leading teams at some of the top tech companies in the world. He’s the kind of person who likes to tinker and try new things. With a little coaxing, he will turn his webcam around in his home office to show a stack of a half dozen servers that constitute what he calls his home lab where much of his tinkering takes place.</p>

<p>When Chris was hired by Symphony AyasdiAI as its senior director of application architecture in the late summer of 2020, he knew that some changes had to be made.</p>

<p>Symphony AyasdiAI makes the #1 artificial intelligence platform for financial services. Large banks use their products to analyze their market and operational risks as well as to detect patterns of potential money laundering. They employ a truly global workforce, with employees spread across the US, the UK, India, and Ukraine. </p>

<p>“When I joined Ayasdi,” he said, “development was very disjointed. People were doing their own thing with their own setups from different types of machines all over the world. Individual computer setup was a nightmare. One of the first things I did was say, ‘This isn’t working.’”</p>

<h2>The Challenges: Inconsistency, Expense, and Wasted Time</h2>

<p>With developers spread out across the United States and several continents, the team faced challenges. Developers were running a variety of operating systems on hardware that ranged from current to outdated. Ensuring consistent development environments across the team was impossible; configuration drift was inevitable, resulting in costly delays debugging code that — as the saying goes — “worked on my machine.” </p>

<p>In addition, the company incurred considerable expense and delays while onboarding new engineers. The IT department attempted to forestall support issues by purchasing and shipping maxed-out laptops to new hires. This approach was not only costly but also sometimes impossible for some of their international team members. Once the laptops arrived, new hires were responsible for configuring their own machines with the libraries and IDEs they would need.  It was not uncommon for more than a week to pass before a developer was able to make their first code commit.</p>

<h2>Searching for a Solution</h2>

<p>Ayasdi needed a solution that would reduce costs and onboarding times while providing consistent workspaces for development across the entire team, regardless of the individual’s hardware or physical location.  </p>

<p>Chris researched several possible solutions; however, none of them seemed viable as they were too tailored to individual repositories or restricted users to less commonly used IDEs. Chris needed a solution with more flexibility that wouldn’t lock his team into a particular ecosystem.</p>

<p>Chris next turned to the open source project <a href="https://github.com/cdr/code-server">code-server</a>. He had used code-server for some personal projects and loved it. By enabling access to VS Code through a browser code-server had allowed him to leave behind his heavy laptop while traveling and still make changes to his codebase using just a tablet. </p>

<p>His original idea was to create a code-server installation for each developer, but while poking around the code-server repository he discovered that Coder offered an enterprise solution built upon code-server. Coder makes reproducing and managing consistent development environments in the cloud simple. </p>

<p>After a two month trial, he knew Coder was his solution — and more.</p>

<h2>The Benefits: Saving Money and Keeping Developers in Flow</h2>

<p>Ayasdi runs Coder on Amazon EKS. Remote developers connect through a VPN to access their environments and use VS Code through a browser from wherever they are physically located. Since the environments are cloud-based, developers no longer need powerful personal devices for compilation and assembly. As of January 2021, the standard-issue device for a new engineer is now a Macbook Air, saving the company over $2,500 apiece over the costly maxed out laptops they previously provided. </p>

<p>Chris’s team set up multiple Docker images. To create a new workspace, the developer simply selects the appropriate image for the project and Coder launches a new container that is configured the same as for every other team member working on the project — no more “it worked on my machine.” Best of all, according to Chris, it only takes minutes. </p>

<p>&quot;With Coder,” he says, “I can get a new developer up and running in a day versus two weeks, and from an engineering perspective that is worth its weight in gold.&quot;</p>

<h2>Plans for the Future</h2>

<p>Ayasdi is currently rolling out Coder for all of its engineers, but Chris sees potential uses beyond the development team. He could, for example, see Coder being used by the sales team to spin up instances for demos. It would be entirely self-service, no tickets required. Since each container would be created from the approved image library there should be no mid-demo surprises caused by misconfiguration issues. He also loves that inactive environments are automatically shut down after a specified time, which should result in an end to ghosted EC2s slowing draining the department’s budget because someone forgot to shut them down after they were no longer needed. </p>

<p>Chis is also starting to ponder whether there might be a way to leverage Coder to allow third-party partners to use the Ayasdi SDK to develop plugins and customizations without revealing actual Ayasdi source code.  As he discusses the possibility he gets a certain gleam in his eye and unconsciously glances over his shoulder at his home lab...</p>

<hr>

<p>Interested in Coder? <a href="https://coder.com/contact">Contact us</a> or <a href="https://coder.com/trial">try it free</a>.</p>


Learn how @Ayasdi, the #1 artificial intelligence platform for financial services, uses Coder to help their developers stay in flow.

Symphony AyasdiAI Reduces Costs and Onboarding Time with Coder 

<p>It’s always fun to read through the annual “Best of” lists that appear this time of year.</p>

<p>It’s even more fun when you are on the list.</p>

<p><em>Built In Austin</em> ranked Coder #2 in its “<a href="https://www.builtinaustin.com/companies/best-small-places-to-work-austin-2021">50 Best Small Companies to Work for in Austin 2021</a>” list published this week.  We also came in at #12 on the “<a href="https://www.builtinaustin.com/companies/best-places-to-work-austin-2021">100 Best Places to Work in Austin in 2021</a>” list, and #8 on “<a href="https://www.builtinaustin.com/companies/best-paying-companies-austin-2021">50 Best Paying Companies in Austin</a>.”</p>

<p><em>Built In</em> evaluates the companies on its lists using an algorithm that takes into consideration employee compensation, benefits and perks, as well as surveys of employees about the company culture. </p>

<p>“Coder is a culture of people excited to solve problems,” said Camilla Lever, Coder’s head of human resources and talent. “The people we hire are not afraid of getting into the weeds or pivoting ideas.” </p>

<p>Wanna work for a great company that treats its employees well? <a href="https://jobs.lever.co/coder">We’re hiring</a>!</p>


Built In Austin lists Coder as one of the best places to work in Austin, TX.

2021 Best Places to Work

Coder Ranked as One of the Best Places to Work in ATX

<p>Organizations are increasingly adopting a zero-trust approach to network security. But what are the implications of this move for software development teams? Is it possible to code productively in such an environment?</p>

<p>Coder is pleased to announce the publication of “Zero-Trust Security for Software
Development Teams.” This whitepaper explains how zero trust differs from traditional approaches to network security. It then shows how using Coder to manage and orchestrate development environments can simplify the implementation of zero trust and help engineers to code faster and more securely while working in zero-trust environments.</p>

<p>The whitepaper is available for <a href="https://coder.com/whitepapers/zero-trust-security-for-software-development-teams">free and immediate download</a>.</p>


Coder is pleased to announce the publication of a new whitepaper: “Zero-Trust Security for Software Development Teams.” 

Zero Trust Whitepaper Now Available

Katie Horne

Camilla Lever

Head of Talent and HR

<p>When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we had just moved into our new office space. We went from trying to remember where the plates were to trying to ensure that all of our employees had everything they needed to work from home productively, comfortably, and safely for an unknown period. We needed new Zoom licenses, new equipment, and to address what seemed to be hundreds of other details.</p>

<p>We were also in the final stages of securing our Series B funding.</p>

<p>These events put our core beliefs and company culture to the test. </p>

<h2>From a Centralized Office to a Distributed Workforce</h2>

<p>The three founders of Coder met online when they were 13. The three founded Coder from their bedrooms, thousands of miles apart. As the concept solidified, they were very passionate about having a home base. That&#39;s why they all moved from three different parts of the world to Austin to create Coder. They had researched and visited several other cities, but Austin offered the resources and culture essential for a tech startup as well and having an overall good vibe. Austin felt like home for Coder.</p>

<p>From the earliest days, we&#39;ve worked to create a culture that is both fun yet serious, hard-working yet laid back, and collaborative yet capable of letting each individual shine. Despite our status as a startup, we&#39;re slow to fill open positions because we are looking for fit and ability to contribute to that culture in addition to the skillset needed for the job.</p>

<p>To that end, we felt strongly that being in Austin was essential -- we wanted people who were Austin-based or were willing to relocate. To us, our physical office seemed vital to maintaining that culture. Conversations, both work-related and personal, happened in the kitchen, in the conference rooms, and even over Slack despite the fact that the participants were sitting next to each other.</p>

<p>As with so many other startups, we spent so much time working that our social and work interactions mingled freely. We would leave the office as a group for planned social outings together. It’s cliche, but we felt like family.</p>

<p>Then came COVID.</p>

<p>The founders and our team worked hard to develop a strategy for maintaining the Coder culture and the bonds we&#39;d developed. We turned afternoon social outings into virtual golf tournaments. We started a daily Good Morning Coffee Chat over Zoom to start the day. We took our in-person watercooler conversations to Slack. It took a while, but we adjusted to the new normal and we were thrilled to see that the culture we worked so hard to build survived the transition.</p>

<p>We were still Coder, just distributed.</p>

<h2>Growing Our Distributed Team</h2>

<p>On April 15, we announced that we had received Series B funding. This meant that we had both the resources and the mandate to grow our team.</p>

<p>Our first hires afterward were Austin-based, but (like the rest of us) would be working remotely until we could return to the office.</p>

<p>As more and more people joined the Coder team, we quickly realized that the culture we developed was strong enough that it could thrive even without the initial interactions in the office. So, we decided to be more open to fully remote employees for our next hires, and we cast the widest recruitment net to date.</p>

<p>The effects were instantaneous and dramatic, especially when it came to attracting a more diverse applicant pool, especially for our technical positions.</p>

<h2>How Our Diverse Workforce Changed Coder for the Better</h2>

<p>The challenges many tech companies face when it comes to recruiting and maintaining a diverse workforce are well-documented and do not need to be rehashed here.</p>

<p>However, we feel that Coder has several advantages in terms of attracting and retaining such candidates. Our founders have impressed upon me, as the Head of HR, their desire to have a diverse workforce. &quot;With diversity comes new ideas, and with unity, those ideas turn into a better reality,&quot; says co-founder John Andrew Entwistle. We are a small, young company that&#39;s free from the baggage of the past&#39;s intolerant actions and policies; instead, we focus on implementing policies that reflect the different needs of our employees. Our parental leave policy, for instance, goes well above the federally mandated requirement by providing paid leave because we understand that starting or adding to a family is stressful enough without having to worry about reduced income as well.</p>

<p>Over time, our morning catch-up calls began to look and sound different. The faces revealed a wider range of ages and the accents were more varied. The discussions themselves have changed, reflecting the variety of lived experiences of our team.</p>

<p>And, as we learn more about our coworkers, we are discovering the many faces that diversity can take, many of which are not immediately obvious.</p>

<p>A few months ago, we created an open Slack channel focused on diversity, with nearly half of the company joining voluntarily. We ask questions, share news, and discuss ideas for raising awareness across the company (for example, what is Coder doing when it comes to providing accessible design?). We don&#39;t want to just talk about these issues, however, so we are actively implementing programs that began as discussions on the channel.</p>

<p>The thing about diversity is that once it is recognized and embraced, it has a way of becoming ingrained in all that we do as a company. We planted the seeds early by defining what we wanted Coder culture to be. However, our initial thoughts on how to make this happen — being in the same place — changed, and with that, we saw an increase in diversity and a strengthening, not a weakening, of our company as a whole.</p>


Becoming a remote-based company strengthened our culture

Diversity Blog Card

How the Pandemic Changed Our Diversity Recruitment Strategy

<p>One of the first lessons learned by any security professional is that policies are not enough. Rules are made, as the saying goes, to be broken, not always intentionally, but they will be broken.</p>

<p>It is far better and safer to implement systems and procedures that automatically enforce the policies. Don&#39;t put up a sign that reads &quot;This door must remain locked at all times&quot; — instead, install a door that automatically locks when closed and sounds an alarm if left ajar for too long.</p>

<p>The same concept is true when it comes to securing the development pipeline: automate whenever possible and alert for failures.</p>

<p>Coder is pleased to announce the publication of “CISO NOTES: Enterprise Security and Developer Productivity are No Longer Mutually Exclusive.” This white paper is intended for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) or others seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the need for and challenges to securing the dev environment. It will articulate how Coder Enterprise can integrate security policy through the software development process, while at the same time maximizing developer velocity.</p>

<p>The paper is the first of a planned series designed to help CISOs navigate the rapidly changing software production pipeline.</p>

<p>The white paper covers:</p>

<ul>
<li>Recent source code leaks from major corporations and government agencies</li>
<li>Best practices for “baking in” security into the code development process</li>
<li>The security advantages of moving dev environments into the cloud</li>
<li>The gains to developer velocity made possible by automating the creation of dev environments</li>
</ul>

<p>The white paper is available for <a href="https://coder.com/whitepapers/ciso-whitepaper-security-productivity">free and immediate download</a>.</p>


The first in a new series of white papers designed to help CISOs navigate the rapidly changing software production pipeline.

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