Microsoft! Please, put down the rebrandogun. No one else needs to get hurt... But it's too late for Visual Studio Online

Barely six months on from its grand unveiling, Microsoft is renaming its browser-based code botherer, Visual Studio Online and, more importantly, is trimming its prices. Now shedding 'Online' in favour of 'Codespaces' to reflect "the true value of the service", the rent-your-own-dev-environment platform was originally revealed …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

This is Microsoft

They will rename it "Office365 codespaces for workgroups internet edition"

[katrinab]

Re: This is Microsoft

Nope. Didn't you get the memo? - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/30/microsoft_office_changes/

Office 365 is no more. It is now Microsoft 365.

[zb]

Re: This is Microsoft

And what is next month's name?

[A.P. Veening]

Re: This is Microsoft

Microsoft 330 ;)

[Phil W]

Re: This is Microsoft

It's to be rebranded Microsoft 366 every four years, and changed back to 365 in the intervening 3.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: This is Microsoft

Nope, every time it fails, it gets rebranded by subtracting one. Pretty soon we will have Microsoft -1234 ;)

[Mike Shepherd]

Safe option

The MBAs must be kept occupied, given the risk of leaving them alone with anything important. Having them invent meaningless product names (.NET was one) is the safe option.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: Safe option

Yeah, but... somehow their "work" has a recurring tendancy to leak and infest the real world.

[Doctor Syntax]

Even safer option

The MBAs must be kept occupied unemployed.

[RichardBarrell]

On the bright side, at least this time the new name is clearer than the old one.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Yeah, but Codespaces reminds me of Codeplex, and that makes it feel like a last ditch rebranding of a failing product?

(Also, price cuts? Not really in Microsoft's DNA, price cuts...)

[Jimmy2Cows]

Maybe Gitpod didn't want to sell out, so MS found they had no choice but to try and... I can hardly bring myself to say it... compete.

[Shudder]

"MS" and "compete" in the same sentence, and with positive connotations. I feel dirty now.

[Arthur the cat]

One problem with the lockdown

is that I've missed my latest eye test, and thus misread the subhead as "Visual Studio Codpieces".

Icon because I really need new glasses.

[9Rune5]

Re: One problem with the lockdown

I suspect your glasses are just fine, and that somebody in Redmond is cursing autocorrect right now.

[bombastic bob]

Re: One problem with the lockdown

Codpieces. I like your name better

[IGnatius T Foobar !]

Questionable value

"In the cloud" can evolve. In a world where monsters like Microsoft and Amazon are trying to suck the entire universe into their clouds, it is better when such tools can be launched inside a container, and the customer can run the container anywhere. This makes it private, portable, and controllable. Say no to Microsoft and Amazon.

[DavidRa]

Re: Questionable value

Honestly, I've spent five weekends and countless nights trying to get K8s to run in a truly HA mode in my lab (3 masters, shared storage for volumes and 2+ workers). I've read dozens of K8s guides, 95% of which build an "HA" environment with a single cluster master accessible only from the master itself.

The other 5% are outdated (even though at least one was only 4 months old, it referenced a process that had been replaced two months prior to the guide date) or plain don't work as written.

At this point K8s feels like ivory tower academia desperately pretending it's open but rabidly protecting its IP so it *can't* be replicated on premise. That's not really a recipe for a future in which I want to be building IT.

That in turn means that I don't currently see containers as a way out of the cloud mess, in case it's not clear.

[G2]

obligatory comment

Re-Brawndo ... it's got Electroly^H^Hspaces.

[Roland6]

"an active codespace in Microsoftland requires a Linux instance"

It does look like MS were serious when they said Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows...