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Comment by cdubzzz | Hacker News Reader

> Having everything already in the cloud in a production-like environment has enormous advantages.

Could you talk about this a little more? I have never used C9. I use git and an IDE on multiple devices (Linux on home desktop, Windows on old ass laptop, macOS at work) so I can work in basically the same environment on any of those devices any time. Granted, I can’t just pull up a browser on any device, but that seems like it would be a rare use case (for me, anyway).

Sounds like you don’t need that MacBook anymore, wanna sell it to me cheap? (:

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In reality those environments are not "the same". You have all sorts of libraries that are compiled and set up specifically for your system, and those differences add up.

With Cloud 9 everything is on an EC2 instance with Linux, exactly the same platform as I will deploy in production.

True. My environments are not the same. Most will call that a disadvantage. I rather like knowing about environments on various platforms and how my applications support them. Of course there are other, probably better, ways to approach that (:

It sounds like C9 can be really useful for AWS deployment specifically, but beyond that I don’t see much value over git+IDE.

The value is that it is online on an ec2 instance on the Aws network , which may or may not be something you want.

Also git+IDE is exactly what I use with Cloud 9. C9 is the IDE.

But why not just use VMWare with Linux locally?

In context of this thread, because aws works with Chromebooks and VMware doesn't.

Funny enough, with Google releasing Debian on Chrome OS, this may actually become an option soon.

We're way past the point where you need to guard your laptop with your life because you'll lose everything, as he puts it. Anyone who isn't already backed up to at least 1 cloud service is stuck in the last decade.

Replacing the hardware and restoring your environment is expensive and time consuming, sometimes prohibitively so. Let's say you're on a road trip through Mexico...

Also backing up a Macbook to the cloud is a lot of data, and Apple doesn't have an adequate solution for this. I was using Backblaze. Their restore method is mailing a USB drive.

Unless you have a local backup, which is not practical while traveling, restoring from backup is non-trivial.

> Anyone who isn't already backed up to at least 1 cloud service is stuck in the last decade.

Are finances not a concern here, or am I missing something else with this suggestion? I don't backup _anything_ to a cloud provider because my last-decades solutions (automation + home network NAS or SAN at work) _just works_, and I, and my company, don't need the recurring costs hit from a cloud provider.

> Are finances not a concern here, or am I missing something else with this suggestion?

Sounds like a little of both to me.

At home I keep my backups on a NAS with RAID 1 redundancy so I'm tolerant to most things. That entire 4TB array is backed up to the cloud through BackBlaze B2 because it's affordable and grants me peace-of-mind for scenarios where both disks fail. I don't use nearly the entire 4TB, so it's about $10/mo for my B2 usage.

So far in life, I've never had to use my cloud backups. Which is great, they'd be slow as can be to download. But the insurance of knowing they're there is completely worth it to me.

For many people here the finances of their tech are not a concern. It’s the source of our income so minor efficiencies can have a big impact on productivity and income. For me any reasonable expense that I will gain value from is worthwhile.

If you are a software engineer and you are concerned about $100/year in cost for your backup system, you might want to consider your priorities.

I guess... I make considerably more than that and my wife makes even more than I do (both of us are Software Engineers, no kids yet) and I have way more important and interesting shit to spend my money (and time) on than cloud provider backups. We also both grew up relatively poor, her from an immigrant family and myself from hillbillies in the Appalachians. Maybe that has something to do with it.

A lot of people who grow up poor have a hard time adjusting their spending habits to optimize their life when they become well off.

I've known such people who will go through great aggravation, follow on sunk costs no good reason, and waste a lot of time - just to save a few dollars or feel they didn't waste money.

I waste probably a few thousand dollars a year on expenditures I never utilize. If the dollar amount is below the cost of the aggravation, I generally won't bother.

If you're working as a software engineer, I assume you are making at least $100,000. A $100 annual cost to ensure your data is saved, and the time savings from maintaining a local backup, seems well worth it and it doesn't make sense to me for that cost to weigh into the decision.

How can you assume someone is making at least $100k if he is working as a software engineer? There's more to the world than the Bay Area.

At Italy maybe 30% of that is the average.

Even in the US this is not the average salary for software engineers if you look outside of the Bay Area and Seattle.

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