November 2021 Summaries

The DevX Digest explores the psychology behind developer experience and whether it is intentionally designed to be challenging. It discusses how developers often prefer tasks that are neither too easy nor too hard, as they provide a sense of accomplishment and flow. The article suggests that optimizing for this balance could improve developer experience rather than solely focusing on making tools easier, faster, or simpler. Additionally, it highlights the importance of catering to different learning styles and providing customization options to enhance user satisfaction.

Microsoft has open-sourced the server code powering Visual Studio Code remote development and GitHub Codespaces, following the launch of OpenVSCode Server by Gitpod in September. This move allows developers to run VS Code as a full web application in their daily workflows with the same low-footprint technique used by Gitpod and Codespaces. The open-sourced server code also enables the use of extensions marketplace, which was previously restricted to Microsoft products. OpenVSCode Server adds minimal changes on top of VS Code to enable the marketplace using Open VSX and HTTPS and WebSocket Secure (wss) by default. Gitpod provides Insiders builds for its VS Code and OpenVSCode Server, allowing users to access the latest features and fixes from VS Code.

Gitpod introduces "Gitpod for Startups", offering eligible companies a 50% discount on their cloud-based developer environment (CDE) solution for up to two years. This program aims to improve startups' productivity and focus by reducing time spent setting up and maintaining dev environments. With unlimited users and usage, the discount applies even as companies scale their workload and engineer teams. To be eligible, startups must have been founded within the last three years, raised a maximum of $10 million in capital, and not yet used a paid plan.