Writing software with chopsticks: the challenges of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDIs) are widely used in highly-regulated industries like financial services and healthcare to ensure security and compliance but are often criticized for negatively impacting the developer experience. VDIs offer remote access to a desktop environment by hosting the operating system, applications, and data on a virtual machine, yet challenges such as losing state, incorrect operating systems, application installation restrictions, and latency issues persist. These challenges hinder the development process by causing delays in real-time feedback, testing, debugging, and code reviews. As an alternative, Cloud Development Environments (CDEs) are proposed, designed specifically to enhance developer productivity while maintaining security and compliance. CDEs provide pre-configured workspaces with all necessary tools and dependencies, offering faster onboarding, consistency, better collaboration, and reduced security risks. They allow for centralized data management, secure remote access, and improved compliance management, making them a recommended solution for secure, remote development without compromising typical developer workflows.