Why I Choose IDX (A Lazy Sysadmin's Perspective)

General
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Hey IDX Community,

I’m not your typical user, but I’m curious to see how many of you relate. I’m a seasoned Linux sysadmin who’s diving into Python. IDX has been a game-changer for me because I’m incredibly lazy when it comes to setting up dev environments on multiple machines.

Here’s why I love IDX:

  • Everything in the browser (PWAs are awesome): No more dependency hell, and I can pick up where I left off from anywhere.
  • No more “works on my machine”: Everything is consistent and reproducible.
  • Streamlined and easy to replicate: Setting up new projects is a breeze.

A few bumps in the road:

  • GitHub integration issues: Nix can be a bit tricky, but I’m sure there’s a workaround.
  • Gemini issues: Hopefully, this gets resolved soon. (See #353646039)

Despite these minor setbacks, IDX hasn’t stopped me from focusing on my Python course. I’m hoping this thread can serve as feedback for the IDX team, especially for training Gemini.

Let’s chat about our experiences!

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Ariston! Thank you so much for this post. It’s always amazing to see when someone gets your product vision. I had the same experience with IDX as well before it was public. I tried an early version and I was hooked, it’s been my daily driver ever since. I joined the team shortly after because I was such a fan.

About the bumps:

  • GitHub integration issues: Nix is definitely tricky but incredibly powerful. We definitely need more documentation and content in general on what you can do here. If you have any specifics on where you struggled please let me know.
  • Gemini issues: I hear you on this one. We’re still in beta and tweaking things all the time which can cause some issues like this. Please bear with us for now but we’re working to make IDX a smooth experience.

Keep us updated with your feedback, the good and the bad.

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Hi David,

This is the only annoyance so far - hitting the commit button returns error messages (see the screenshots), but it’s not something that blocks me from doing my work because I use github from CLI. I added " pkgs.gnupg" to my dev.nix file, but I gotta be missing something here. I know that nix is powerful, but I was lazy to dive deeply into this because I am busy with my python course. Any ideas how to fix this? Cheers!

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Love this post. I am a student and this product is just what I needed, whenever I forget my PC at home it’s ok because now I can just walk into the computer classroom, boot up any machine and my project is right there so getting to know how professionals and seasoned programmers use IDX gives me new perspectives of what else can I use IDX for. Right now I am facing a weird bug tho, my terminal auto-closes and I don’t why, trying to find a solution here Thank you Ariston and David for sharing your knowledge