eclipse_newsletter/2020/march/content/en_3.php - www.eclipse.org/community - Git at Google

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  * Copyright (c) 2020 Eclipse Foundation.
  *
  * This program and the accompanying materials are made
  * available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0
  * which is available at https://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0/
  *
  * Contributors:
  *   Eric Poirier (Eclipse Foundation) - Initial implementation
  *
  * SPDX-License-Identifier: EPL-2.0
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 <h1 class="article-title"><?php echo $pageTitle; ?></h1>
 <p>
   When the <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/che/">Eclipse Che</a> project started four years ago
   this month, the most common question I heard was &ldquo;This is really cool technology, but what
   do you use it for?&rdquo;
 </p>
 <p>At the time, there wasn&rsquo;t a lot of activity happening around cloud-based developer tools such as integrated development environments (IDEs).
   There were even fewer activities around container-focused, cloud-based IDEs. People were very
   interested in what was happening in Eclipse Che, but they weren&rsquo;t quite sure what to make of
   it.</p>
 <p>Fast-forward to March 2020 and the landscape has changed dramatically. People have a
   much better understanding of cloud-based development and containers. And they appreciate
   how much faster and easier Eclipse Che makes it to develop enterprise applications that leverage
   containers and Kubernetes.</p>
 <p>With the speed and simplicity that Che enables, people have flocked to it. Today, a
   number of corporations and communities across the globe rely heavily on Eclipse Che to expand,
   enhance, and tailor their developer experiences. Leading technology providers, including IBM, CA
   Technologies, SAP, Red Hat, Samsung, and Broadcom use Che. It&rsquo;s also used broadly across
   industries, including banking, automotive, and healthcare.</p>
 <p>While most people have a good understanding of Eclipse Che and its benefits, there are
   still a few facts about this very versatile technology that surprise people.</p>
 <h2>1. You Can Use Che for Just About Anything</h2>
 <p>Instead of asking what you would use Che for, the question now is more along the lines
   of &ldquo;what wouldn&rsquo;t you use it for?&rdquo; In addition to the expected use cases — helping developers get
   started and contribute to applications that will be deployed on a Kubernetes platform — we&rsquo;re also seeing some
   really interesting and unexpected applications.</p>
 <ul>
   <li><strong>Mainframes. </strong>At least two major corporations are using the cutting-edge
     technology in Eclipse Che to make it easier for developers to build mainframe applications.
     While mainframes are very established technology, they&rsquo;re also arguably one of the most
     complex developer environments to set up. Newer developers typically don&rsquo;t have the
     experience or expertise needed, but they’re intrigued by the salaries COBOL developers can receive!
     Eclipse Che gives them an easy on-ramp if they want to pursue that interest.</li>
 </ul>
 <p>Once you get past the novel idea of combining mainframes with new technology like containers
  and Kubernetes, it makes perfect sense. But, it&rsquo;s certainly not a use case we
   envisioned when we started Che.</p>
 <ul>
   <li><strong>IoT.</strong> Eclipse Che is also making it easier for developers to contribute to IoT
     device development &mdash; from laptops, from the cloud, from anywhere really. We&rsquo;ve seen
     Che used for IoT application development in the automotive industry and on devices such as the
     Raspberry Pi.</li>
 </ul>
 <p>These are just two of the many innovative ways Che is being used. Those of us who work
   on the project feel we&rsquo;re just starting to scratch the surface of how the technology can be
   used.</p>
 <h2>2. The Real Power of Che Is the Backend Functionality</h2>
 <p>Many people think of Eclipse Che as a web-based IDE. But, the IDE represents only about
   20 percent of Che&rsquo;s capabilities. The most interesting and powerful part of Che is the 80
   percent that happens behind the scenes.</p>
 <p>A growing number of people in the Eclipse Che community are focusing on what the Che
   backend can do for them. In fact, some don&rsquo;t use the Che IDE at all. They swap it out for
   something that&rsquo;s more appropriate for their needs.</p>
 <p>For example, data scientists don&rsquo;t need an IDE that looks like Visual Studio Code
   because they&rsquo;re not coders. They want to use their Jupyter Notebook or something like it.
   Other folks don&rsquo;t want to use a web-based editor. They prefer to take advantage of the Che
   server and the workspaces it provisions directly from their desktop IDE. That’s possible too.
 </p>
 <p>The point here is the conversation shouldn&rsquo;t be about the Che IDE. It should be
   about comparing Eclipse Che to other tools that provision workspaces in the background so
   developers don&rsquo;t have to. Today, there aren&rsquo;t many tools that provide this capability
   in a Kubernetes environment. You can do it with virtual machines, but VMs are heavy, slow, and not
   easily portable. And they certainly don&rsquo;t support hyperscale like containers and Kubernetes
   do.</p>
 <h2>3. You Can Use Che Offline</h2>
 <p>You can use Eclipse Che in an environment that&rsquo;s completely disconnected, or
   air-gapped, from the internet. There are two reasons this is important:</p>
 <ul>
   <li>Many organizations in government, defense, financial, and academic sectors have walled-off
     their most important applications from the internet for security reasons. However, they still
     want their developers to be able to quickly contribute code to those critical applications.</li>
 </ul>
 <p>When these organizations find out they can use Che offline, it&rsquo;s typically a big
   &ldquo;wow&rdquo; moment for them. Their developers are very intelligent people, but they work in
   highly constrained worlds with limited access to sophisticated, modern tools like Che.</p>
 <ul>
   <li>When developers are traveling, they often have periods of time where they&rsquo;re not
     connected to the internet. With Che, they can remain productive during these times.</li>
 </ul>
 <h2>4. Che Has Many Innovative Contributors</h2>
 <p>Many people still think of Eclipse Che as a Red Hat project, but it&rsquo;s not. It
   started as a project from a company called Codenvy that was acquired by Red Hat, but the community
   has broadened considerably since then. It now includes contributors from a wide range of locations
   and corporations.</p>
 <p>Che is your typical Eclipse community that&rsquo;s always expanding and is very
   approachable. We have weekly community calls, and they now often include demos from our community
   members. Some of these demos are very impressive, which shows we&rsquo;ve reached an
   exciting and interesting stage in the project&rsquo;s growth.</p>
 <h2>5. The Che IDE Has Come a Long Way Since It Was First Released</h2>
 <p>Although the IDE isn’t the only part of Che you should care about, it’s where most people first interact with the project.
   When Eclipse Che was first released, many people probably liked the functionality it
   provided, but were put off by the fact that it didn&rsquo;t look like the IDE they were already
   using. It likely seemed easier to stick with what they knew rather than go through a learning
   curve they didn&rsquo;t have time for.</p>
 <p>Today, the Che IDE looks and behaves like Visual Studio Code so it&rsquo;s a painless
   move for millions of developers around the world. Developers also have the flexibility to stick
   with their preferred cloud or on-premises IDE. That learning curve they were so worried about has
   virtually disappeared.</p>
 <p>In addition, in Che 7, we made key changes that mean production containers look the
   same in production as they do in development. Tooling and other required elements are wrapped
   around the production container, using container sidecars, so the application containers aren’t
   changed when you move from development to production or vice-versa. This is very important to ensure the validity of testing.</p>
 <h2>Take Another Look at Che</h2>
 <p>If you haven&rsquo;t looked at Che in a while, it&rsquo;s definitely time to take
   another look and re-evaluate how it can help you take advantage of new opportunities and tackle
   major challenges. There are a lot of people in the Che community doing some very innovative work
   with the technology and we&rsquo;re constantly making improvements.</p>
 <p>
   To get started, visit our <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/che/">website</a>. You&rsquo;ll find an
   overview of Che 7, our newest and biggest release ever, along with detailed information about
   using Che and the links you need to get started.If you want to try it right away, sign up to use
   the <a href="https://che.openshift.io/dashboard/">free Eclipse Che Software as a Service (SaaS) that Red Hat hosts</a>
   on our OpenShift Kubernetes platform.
 </p>
 <div class="bottomitem">
   <h3>About the Author</h3>
   <div class="row">
     <div class="col-sm-16">
       <div class="row">
         <div class="col-sm-6">
           <img class="img-responsive"
             src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2020/march/images/brad.png" alt="<?php print $pageAuthor; ?>"
           />
         </div>
         <div class="col-sm-18">
           <p class="author-name"><?php print $pageAuthor; ?></p>
         </div>
       </div>
     </div>
   </div>
 </div>
	<?php
	/**
	* Copyright (c) 2020 Eclipse Foundation.
	*
	* This program and the accompanying materials are made
	* available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0
	* which is available at https://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0/
	*
	* Contributors:
	* Eric Poirier (Eclipse Foundation) - Initial implementation
	*
	* SPDX-License-Identifier: EPL-2.0
	*/
	// This file must be included
	if (basename(__FILE__) == basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'])) {
	exit();
	}
	?>
	<h1 class="article-title"><?php echo $pageTitle; ?></h1>
	<p>
	When the <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/che/">Eclipse Che</a> project started four years ago
	this month, the most common question I heard was “This is really cool technology, but what
	do you use it for?”
	</p>
	<p>At the time, there wasn’t a lot of activity happening around cloud-based developer tools such as integrated development environments (IDEs).
	There were even fewer activities around container-focused, cloud-based IDEs. People were very
	interested in what was happening in Eclipse Che, but they weren’t quite sure what to make of
	it.</p>
	<p>Fast-forward to March 2020 and the landscape has changed dramatically. People have a
	much better understanding of cloud-based development and containers. And they appreciate
	how much faster and easier Eclipse Che makes it to develop enterprise applications that leverage
	containers and Kubernetes.</p>
	<p>With the speed and simplicity that Che enables, people have flocked to it. Today, a
	number of corporations and communities across the globe rely heavily on Eclipse Che to expand,
	enhance, and tailor their developer experiences. Leading technology providers, including IBM, CA
	Technologies, SAP, Red Hat, Samsung, and Broadcom use Che. It’s also used broadly across
	industries, including banking, automotive, and healthcare.</p>
	<p>While most people have a good understanding of Eclipse Che and its benefits, there are
	still a few facts about this very versatile technology that surprise people.</p>
	<h2>1. You Can Use Che for Just About Anything</h2>
	<p>Instead of asking what you would use Che for, the question now is more along the lines
	of “what wouldn’t you use it for?” In addition to the expected use cases — helping developers get
	started and contribute to applications that will be deployed on a Kubernetes platform — we’re also seeing some
	really interesting and unexpected applications.</p>
	<ul>
	<li><strong>Mainframes. </strong>At least two major corporations are using the cutting-edge
	technology in Eclipse Che to make it easier for developers to build mainframe applications.
	While mainframes are very established technology, they’re also arguably one of the most
	complex developer environments to set up. Newer developers typically don’t have the
	experience or expertise needed, but they’re intrigued by the salaries COBOL developers can receive!
	Eclipse Che gives them an easy on-ramp if they want to pursue that interest.</li>
	</ul>
	<p>Once you get past the novel idea of combining mainframes with new technology like containers
	and Kubernetes, it makes perfect sense. But, it’s certainly not a use case we
	envisioned when we started Che.</p>
	<ul>
	<li><strong>IoT.</strong> Eclipse Che is also making it easier for developers to contribute to IoT
	device development — from laptops, from the cloud, from anywhere really. We’ve seen
	Che used for IoT application development in the automotive industry and on devices such as the
	Raspberry Pi.</li>
	</ul>
	<p>These are just two of the many innovative ways Che is being used. Those of us who work
	on the project feel we’re just starting to scratch the surface of how the technology can be
	used.</p>
	<h2>2. The Real Power of Che Is the Backend Functionality</h2>
	<p>Many people think of Eclipse Che as a web-based IDE. But, the IDE represents only about
	20 percent of Che’s capabilities. The most interesting and powerful part of Che is the 80
	percent that happens behind the scenes.</p>
	<p>A growing number of people in the Eclipse Che community are focusing on what the Che
	backend can do for them. In fact, some don’t use the Che IDE at all. They swap it out for
	something that’s more appropriate for their needs.</p>
	<p>For example, data scientists don’t need an IDE that looks like Visual Studio Code
	because they’re not coders. They want to use their Jupyter Notebook or something like it.
	Other folks don’t want to use a web-based editor. They prefer to take advantage of the Che
	server and the workspaces it provisions directly from their desktop IDE. That’s possible too.
	</p>
	<p>The point here is the conversation shouldn’t be about the Che IDE. It should be
	about comparing Eclipse Che to other tools that provision workspaces in the background so
	developers don’t have to. Today, there aren’t many tools that provide this capability
	in a Kubernetes environment. You can do it with virtual machines, but VMs are heavy, slow, and not
	easily portable. And they certainly don’t support hyperscale like containers and Kubernetes
	do.</p>
	<h2>3. You Can Use Che Offline</h2>
	<p>You can use Eclipse Che in an environment that’s completely disconnected, or
	air-gapped, from the internet. There are two reasons this is important:</p>
	<ul>
	<li>Many organizations in government, defense, financial, and academic sectors have walled-off
	their most important applications from the internet for security reasons. However, they still
	want their developers to be able to quickly contribute code to those critical applications.</li>
	</ul>
	<p>When these organizations find out they can use Che offline, it’s typically a big
	“wow” moment for them. Their developers are very intelligent people, but they work in
	highly constrained worlds with limited access to sophisticated, modern tools like Che.</p>
	<ul>
	<li>When developers are traveling, they often have periods of time where they’re not
	connected to the internet. With Che, they can remain productive during these times.</li>
	</ul>
	<h2>4. Che Has Many Innovative Contributors</h2>
	<p>Many people still think of Eclipse Che as a Red Hat project, but it’s not. It
	started as a project from a company called Codenvy that was acquired by Red Hat, but the community
	has broadened considerably since then. It now includes contributors from a wide range of locations
	and corporations.</p>
	<p>Che is your typical Eclipse community that’s always expanding and is very
	approachable. We have weekly community calls, and they now often include demos from our community
	members. Some of these demos are very impressive, which shows we’ve reached an
	exciting and interesting stage in the project’s growth.</p>
	<h2>5. The Che IDE Has Come a Long Way Since It Was First Released</h2>
	<p>Although the IDE isn’t the only part of Che you should care about, it’s where most people first interact with the project.
	When Eclipse Che was first released, many people probably liked the functionality it
	provided, but were put off by the fact that it didn’t look like the IDE they were already
	using. It likely seemed easier to stick with what they knew rather than go through a learning
	curve they didn’t have time for.</p>
	<p>Today, the Che IDE looks and behaves like Visual Studio Code so it’s a painless
	move for millions of developers around the world. Developers also have the flexibility to stick
	with their preferred cloud or on-premises IDE. That learning curve they were so worried about has
	virtually disappeared.</p>
	<p>In addition, in Che 7, we made key changes that mean production containers look the
	same in production as they do in development. Tooling and other required elements are wrapped
	around the production container, using container sidecars, so the application containers aren’t
	changed when you move from development to production or vice-versa. This is very important to ensure the validity of testing.</p>
	<h2>Take Another Look at Che</h2>
	<p>If you haven’t looked at Che in a while, it’s definitely time to take
	another look and re-evaluate how it can help you take advantage of new opportunities and tackle
	major challenges. There are a lot of people in the Che community doing some very innovative work
	with the technology and we’re constantly making improvements.</p>
	<p>
	To get started, visit our <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/che/">website</a>. You’ll find an
	overview of Che 7, our newest and biggest release ever, along with detailed information about
	using Che and the links you need to get started.If you want to try it right away, sign up to use
	the <a href="https://che.openshift.io/dashboard/">free Eclipse Che Software as a Service (SaaS) that Red Hat hosts</a>
	on our OpenShift Kubernetes platform.
	</p>
	<div class="bottomitem">
	<h3>About the Author</h3>
	<div class="row">
	<div class="col-sm-16">
	<div class="row">
	<div class="col-sm-6">
	<img class="img-responsive"
	src="/community/eclipse_newsletter/2020/march/images/brad.png" alt="<?php print $pageAuthor; ?>"
	/>
	</div>
	<div class="col-sm-18">
	<p class="author-name"><?php print $pageAuthor; ?></p>
	</div>
	</div>
	</div>
	</div>
	</div>