Codepod as a VSCode plugin?

[kolibril13]

The amazing react based whiteboard https://www.tldraw.com/ recently published an extension for VS Code: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tldraw-org.tldraw-vscode

Would something like this also be possible for Codepod?

This would allow using VS Code IDE features like version control, keyboard shortcuts, GitHub copilot, easy installation via extension marketplace, easy switching to other files and simple selection of the juypter kernel.

[lihebi]

Thanks for the suggestion, Hendrik. We have been thinking about the CodePod-as-a-VSCode-plugin idea for a long time.

The main issue is that we're using a database as the backend and lack a file-based backend. It doesn't sound fun and easy to maintain multiple backends, nor do we have the bandwidth.

We choose to use a database because it is more scalable and performant to save changes to individual pods than saving big .ipynb files. Also, it is more straightforward to implement team collaboration features (such as collaborative editing, commenting, and fine-grained access control) with a database.

As for the features provided by VSCode, we actually need to work out a tailored version that suits our hierarchy of pods (and we are working on it). For example,

• VCS: .ipynb files are never easy to be version-controlled. We're working on a VCS that is fine-grained to handle individual, nested scopes/pods.
• keyboard shortcuts: VSCode mainly provides in-file shortcuts. We are using the same Monaco editor, so the shortcuts in a pod should be consistent with those in VSCode. More importantly, we need to have some special shortcuts that are never in VSCode and unique in CodePod, such as jumping between pods on a Canvas.
• copilot: First of all, you can use some chatGPT-based plugin, e.g., with a Chrome plugin called Codeium. More importantly, a fine-tuned copilot/chatGPT is needed to understand the hierarchy of the pods. Side note: our team (esp. Professor Bao and I) are in the AI/NLP field of research, and we are seriously working on a tailored LLM.