81. Remote VSCode with EC2 and Cloud9

Are you tired of being stuck in your local development environment? Do you dream of coding from a beach in Sicily? Well, get ready to make those dreams a reality with this episode of AWS Bites!

Today we are here to show you how to use VSCode to develop against a remote Cloud9 instance on AWS.

You'll learn how to edit in VSCode instead of using the Cloud9 editor, so you can take advantage of the power of the cloud and code from anywhere while staying in the comfort of your favourite code editor.

We'll cover two ways to edit in VSCode: with SSM and with VSCode Tunnels. With these setups, you can code from home, a coffee shop, or even a beach in Sicily (if you like granitas and sunshine). Plus, you'll get to use that fancy iPad you spent all that money on (also) for coding!

Get comfortable and let’s learn how to set up our next remote coding environment!

💰 SPONSORS 💰

AWS Bites is sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fourTheorem⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, an AWS Consulting Partner offering training, cloud migration, and modern application architecture.

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• Visual Studio Code Server: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/vscode-server
• Our previous episode "When do you need a bastion host?": https://awsbites.com/78-when-do-you-need-a-bastion-host/
• Instructions to set up your own VS Code integration with Cloud9: https://gist.github.com/lmammino/13f8ae95b222919c51b42153bfc71637
• Our live series stream "Coding a serverless file transfer app on AWS": https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAWXFhe0N1vI1_z-06EzJ22pz95_gBrId

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Ipad vs hardware

Most developers don't use ipads or chrome books. For several years I've been using VSCode / AWSCLIV2 without session mananger, on a MacBook Pro and on a PC. I've created highly complex lambdas for 120 AWS services, including sophisticated multi-service, multi-product ETL. I'd suggest using local installs because using AES-256 - this doesn't need the tunelling approach which you described. Neither do you need a cloud9 instance for this approach. I run up to 21 sessions including those on 3 of my accounts, 18 business accounts. You can run debug with break points and avoid lambda timeouts. It gets round cross account issues, tangental bypasses on the security in many cases, and has enabled massive speed ups in protoyping. Obviously in test and prod you have to play by the rules, but with test data and test hardware, it's a great way to build real world solutions. Bug fix is very rapid using this approach too. You can run a lot of RBAC configurations and test limits with that as well, by swapping and combining use cases for user based sessions. I aced a sagemaker AWS interview in 6 days using this method and use the cli and boto3 library to interrogate almost all of the object commands needed. You can run these in place. I used this method on-prem for 2 years before the Gov panic. I was also forced to work remotely in 2020 like almost everyone else and haven't looked back. I train staff on-prem (not AWS staff) to use this method too. Nobody is truly on-prem with AWS unless they have an AWS Datacenter clearance. That said, the method I am describing integrates edge-node capabilities very well for coding and suffers from the comms delays associated with extra-AWS traffic limits, at the same time. It is a swiss army knife and I'd be writing nothing of interest without it.