Coder

What do you like best about the product?

The value that brings to our developer team by enabling easy remote development environments

What do you dislike about the product?

It is not easy to use some features like devcontainers with GPU support, we haven't been able to set it up even when we contacted them with this limitations

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Scalable remote development environment across different teams

What do you like best about the product?

Coder was extremely easy to deploy and configure. We've had great success configuring devcontainer usage and moving developers from expensive VDI setups to far more efficient Coder workspaces.

What do you dislike about the product?

Coder is still in active development which can mean the newest features aren't quite as polished. We haven't had any deal breakers, but there's always risks deploying the latest versions of anything.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Quick, secure, and easily deployed workspaces for rapid development of a large codebase. Coder is dev-focused and tech forward, and it's saved us countless hours and lots of infrastructure cost.

What do you like best about the product?

Coder has become an essential tool in our company, with more than 50 developers relying on it on a day to day basis.

The platform is extremely user-friendly. For us, having a clean user interface instead of depending on CLI commands or YAML files was a significant advantage. With just a few clicks, our developers can launch workspaces and connect using their preferred IDEs. The learning curve is minimal: any developer can get started with Coder immediately, without any prior experience.

Another feature we appreciate is the ability to create templates. We maintain various templates with all the dependencies our different teams need, updating them regularly. This ensures that no one has to waste time setting up or installing packages; as soon as a workspace is launched, everything is ready to use.

We run Coder on Kubernetes, which makes integration with standard K8s tools like Karpenter, OpenCost, Argo CD, and Prometheus straightforward. The setup process was also simple. Deploying Coder using the provided documentation and Helm chart in Kubernetes was quick and smooth.

Even though we’re using the Community Edition, their support through Discord has been great, whenever we’ve asked a question the team has always replied and helped us out.

What do you dislike about the product?

Certain features that would be particularly useful for our needs are not yet fully developed or tailored to our requirements. For instance, our workflow depends significantly on GPU workloads, and we were hoping to utilize DevContainers. However, at this time, DevContainers do not offer GPU isolation in a manner compatible with our environment. Additionally, we make extensive use of Docker. Although we succeeded in building a template that enables us to run Docker with GPU isolation within a workspace, achieving this setup required considerable effort and the solution is still not completely reliable.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Our primary motivation for adopting Coder was the need to efficiently share GPU-powered EC2 instances on AWS among multiple developers, while maintaining control over GPU allocation.

Previously, sharing a machine was nearly impossible: developers had to connect manually via SSH, set up their own directories, and there was no effective way to isolate resources when several people were working simultaneously.

Coder addresses this issue perfectly: developers can simply choose the amount of CPU, RAM, and GPU they require, and Coder automatically finds a machine that meets those requirements and isolates those resources for them.

What do you like best about the product?

This is a great solution for running virtual development environments. I appreciate having access to a complete IDE from anywhere, which makes working remotely much more convenient.

What do you dislike about the product?

I understand that developers need to make a profit, but there are far too many features locked behind the premium plan. It’s also frustrating that they don’t provide any public information about pricing, which makes things even less helpful.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Coder makes it easy for me to access a development environment from any computer simply by using a browser. When I have access to my personal computer, I can also connect my locally installed IDE to the same workspace, which adds even more flexibility to my workflow.

What do you like best about the product?

The ability to rapidly set up standardized developer environments using industry-standard tools like Kubernetes and Terraform, which are already familiar to most platform teams, is a significant advantage.

What do you dislike about the product?

The documentation for some of the more niche implementations could be easier to access.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

The product ensures compliance with the latest DORA requirements. I no longer encounter the frustrating 'works on my machine' issues.