You should not do anything serious on Google-based technology, especially not on non-core technology, as it cannot be depended on to be properly supported or even exist at all.
Similarly, it's safe to assume that any and all data that can be collected will be sent to the mother-ship for whichever purpose they see fit. I increasingly believe that the very similar act of hosting your proprietary code on Github is plain dumb. We're lazy and naive, actively creating these monopolies by giving away our value, data and secrets for free.
Convenience and (initially) free is how we keep falling for this.
Google is both harmful and childish. They don't do responsibility. They toy around like little children and cannot even grasp the concept of a customer. They can suck and screw up anything they touch for decades in a row with seemingly zero consequences. Because somehow 30 billion gets printed every quarter regardless of what they do. That would be 30 billion earned over the backs of the content WE produce, not Google.
In fairness, their office is an excellent adult daycare center.
Eloquently put, but I guess all those people seriously using Android, Angular, Chrome, or TensorFlow might disagree. Unless you consider these core technology of course, in case one may wonder by what reasoning IDX could not become core technology as well.
Indeed, Android app development is why I added the non-core part. Try as I might, I can't deny that it's a vast (business) ecosystem. Too big too fail and part of the money printer.
I wouldn't call IDX core because it doesn't solve the problem the article opens with. It says that modern app stacks are complex. IDX doesn't solve that at all. There's the same amount of moving parts behind the curtain, it's just that stitching them together is made easier.
The motivation for the service is unclear, but in itself it can't produce serious revenue so I guess it's an on-ramp to Google Cloud hosting. And perhaps another "free" service to train AI on.
It took me some time to understand your cynicism. I personally find it easier to believe that there is a spark of joy in the minds of those working on this, and that they are not only in it for milking our code to train an AI overlord to accomplish, what exactly?
We can certainly agree that to "navigate an endless sea of complexity" in getting an app "from zero to production" is no fun. Firebase is in the business of making this easier, and IDX is probably, as you might imply, an on-ramp to use Firebase. I don't see what is wrong with that.
I also fail to see why IDX would be free. I guess it will run in the Google Cloud, and provide their developers with some hard earned income.
All in all I'm still positive in hoping that there will be a real solution for a real problem :)
My neutral stance is that this is a potentially marginally useful tool. There's nothing fundamentally new about it. Github has an online IDE, as does Amazon, as does everybody. In particular at Github it shouldn't be that difficult to connect it to deployment actions, after which you have the same thing, yet with more flexibility.
As said earlier, it doesn't reduce the complexity of the tech stack nor will it maintain itself. When you create a React/Vue app this way, your shit continues to constantly get out of date. And you'll need to continue to coordinate dev setups within a team.
You should not do anything serious on Google-based technology, especially not on non-core technology, as it cannot be depended on to be properly supported or even exist at all.
Similarly, it's safe to assume that any and all data that can be collected will be sent to the mother-ship for whichever purpose they see fit. I increasingly believe that the very similar act of hosting your proprietary code on Github is plain dumb. We're lazy and naive, actively creating these monopolies by giving away our value, data and secrets for free.
Convenience and (initially) free is how we keep falling for this.
Google is both harmful and childish. They don't do responsibility. They toy around like little children and cannot even grasp the concept of a customer. They can suck and screw up anything they touch for decades in a row with seemingly zero consequences. Because somehow 30 billion gets printed every quarter regardless of what they do. That would be 30 billion earned over the backs of the content WE produce, not Google.
In fairness, their office is an excellent adult daycare center.