I have used remote dev machines just fine, but my workflow vastly differs from many of my coworkers: terminal-only spacemacs + tmux + mosh. I have a lot of CLI and TUI tools, and I do not use VScode at all. The main GUI app I run is a browser, and that runs locally.
I have worked on developing VMs for other developers that rely on a local IDE such. The main sticking point is syncing and schlepping source code (something my setup avoids because the source code and editor is on the remote machine). I have tried a number of approaches, and I sympathize with the article author. So, in response to "Devs need to create the software tooling to make remote dev less painful. I mean, they're devs... making software is kind of their whole thing." <-- syncing and schlepping source code is by no means a solved problem.
I can also say that, my spacemacs config is very vanilla. Like my phone, I don't want to be messing with it when I want to code. Writing tooling for my editor environment is a sideshow for the work I am trying to finish.
I am hardly a dev but occasionally have had to do some or some scripting or web stuff and have really loved VSCode and using the remote SSH support to basically feel like I’m coding locally. Does that not work for your devs?
UNIX, and other competing timesharing systems of the time, have always been remote first, with Windows catching up with Citrix, followed by RDP, and nowadays finally headless as well.
Nowadays Web frontends and SSH/cloud shell, have replaced what used to be X Windows / telnet / rsh, but the underlying workflows aren't much different than running an IDE / emacs /vi / joe /... from a UNIX development server in a 1990's office.
Add to it the whole TUI fashion, as if we weren't doing them already 50 years ago.
We did, it is called GUI and language REPLs, like Smalltalk and Interlisp-D development enviroments, with graphical based terminals, not dependent on replicating virtual teletypes.
Still something that seems problematic to take off the way it should.
I have worked on developing VMs for other developers that rely on a local IDE such. The main sticking point is syncing and schlepping source code (something my setup avoids because the source code and editor is on the remote machine). I have tried a number of approaches, and I sympathize with the article author. So, in response to "Devs need to create the software tooling to make remote dev less painful. I mean, they're devs... making software is kind of their whole thing." <-- syncing and schlepping source code is by no means a solved problem.
I can also say that, my spacemacs config is very vanilla. Like my phone, I don't want to be messing with it when I want to code. Writing tooling for my editor environment is a sideshow for the work I am trying to finish.