Ask HN: Do you use cloud VMs at work for software development?

[virtualmachine7]

Hello,

I'd like to get a feel for if/how people are using cloud VMs from AWS/Azure etc. to do their day to day software development.

What does it cost per dev to rent the VMs?

Are there latency issues? Is the machine fast enough?

Do you have to boot up and shut down to save costs?

Are there any amazing advantages you found over a "local" computer?

Is it company policy, rolled out, or just you?

Do you prefer it? Would you recommend it?

Any tips or good deals from AWS / Azure for this purpose?

Thanks!

[yuppie_scum]

I don’t really know why you’d want to develop on a remote machine in 2021, unless you have a VERY “thin client.” Even a $20 raspberry Pi could probably be a good dev platform these days. You can generally write, build, and test applications entirely locally using containers. Port forward to remote dependency resources via your vpn if needed.

I think you’d pay back the costs of a pretty good laptop vs AWS workstation or EC2 instance (not VM - Instance) within a few months.

The only scenario where we use AWS Workstations is to provide in-country workstations for offshore resources in certain compliance situations.

If your builds or tests are taking too long due to compute constraints on your local workstation, maybe AWS CodeDeploy or something like that could help offload that to the cloud efficiently.

The pricing for AWS instances at least is pretty clearly stated on their site if you google for it.

Id recommend maybe looking at some AWS 101 YouTube videos to understand the space a little better.

Heroku is a pretty easy to grok cloud platform as well, efficient way to bootstrap but maybe not long term.