This is a guest post from Brian Christner. Brian is a Docker Captain since 2016, host of The Byte podcast, and Co-Founder & Site Reliability Engineer at 56K.Cloud. At 56K.Cloud, he helps companies to adapt technologies and concepts like Cloud, Containers, and DevOps. 56K.Cloud is a Technology company from Switzerland focusing on Automation, IoT, Containerization, and DevOps.
It was a fantastic experience hosting my first ever virtual conference session. The commute to my home office was great, and I even picked up a coffee on the way before my session started. No more waiting in lines, queueing for food, or sitting on the conference floor somewhere in a corner to check emails.
The “DockerCon 2020 that’s a wrap” blog post highlighted my session “How to Become a Docker Power User using VS Code” session was one of the most popular sessions from DockerCon. Docker asked if I could write a recap and summarize some of the top questions that appeared in the chat. Absolutely.
Honestly, I liked the presented/audience interaction more than an in-person conference. Typically, a presenter broadcasts their content to a room full of participants, and if you are lucky and plan your session tempo well enough, you still have 5-10 minutes for Q&A at the end. Even with 5-10 minutes, I find it is never enough time to answer questions, and people always walk away as they have to hurry to the next session.
Virtual Events allow the presenters to answer questions in real-time in the chat. Real-time chat is brilliant as I found a lot more questions were being asked compared to in-person sessions. However, we averaged about 5,500 people online during the session, so the chat became fast and furious with Q&A.
I quickly summarized the Chat transcript of people saying hello from countries/cities around the world. The chat kicked off with people from around the world chiming in to say “Hello from my home country/city. Just from the chat transcripts and people saying hello, I counted the following:
Argentina 1
Austria 2
Belgium 1
Brazil 4
Canada 3
Chile 1
Colombia 1
Denmark 3
France 3
Germany 3
Greece 2
Guatemala 1
Italy 1
Korea 1
Mexico 1
My chair 1
Netherlands 2
Poland 2
Portugal 2
Saudi Arabia 1
South Africa 4
Spain 1
Switzerland 3
UK 3
USA 15
TOTAL 62
Top 5 Questions
Based on the Chat transcript, we summarized the top 5 questions/requests.
- The number one asked question was for the link to the demo code. VS Code demo Repo – https://github.com/vegasbrianc/vscode-docker-demo
- Does VS Code support VIM/Emacs keybindings? Yes, and yes. You can either install the VIM or Emacs keybinding emulation to transform VS Code to your favorite editor keybinding shortcuts.
- We had several docker-compose questions ranging from can I run X with docker-compose to can I run docker-compose in production. Honestly, you can run docker-compose in production, but it depends on your application and use case. Please have a look at the Docker Voting Application, highlighting the different ways you can run the same application stack. Additionally, docker-compose documentation is an excellent resource.
- VS Code Debugging – This is a really powerful tool. If you select the Debug option when bootstrapping your project Debug is built in by default. Otherwise, you can add the debug code manually
- Docker context is one of the latest features to arrive in the VS Code Docker extension. A few questions asked how to setup Docker contexts and how to use it. At the moment, you still need to set up a Docker Context using the terminal. I would highly recommend reading the blog post by Anca Lordache wrote about using Docker Context as it provides a complete end-to-end set up of using Context with remote hosts
Bonus question!
The most requested question during the session is a link to the Cat GIF’s so here you go.
More Information
- That’s a wrap Blog post:- https://www.docker.com/blog/dockercon-2020-and-thats-a-wrap/
- Become a Docker Power User With Microsoft Visual Studio Code – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUZxIWDUicA
- Code used in the talk and demo – https://github.com/vegasbrianc/vscode-docker-demo
- VIM Keybinding – https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevim.vim
- Emacs Keybinding – https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodeemacs.emacs
- Docker Voting Application – https://github.com/dockersamples/example-voting-app
- docker-compose documentation – https://docs.docker.com/compose/
- VS Code Debug – https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/containers/debug-common
- How to deploy on remote Docker hosts with docker-compose – https://www.docker.com/blog/how-to-deploy-on-remote-docker-hosts-with-docker-compose/
Additional links mentioned during the session
- 2020 Stackoverflow Survey – https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-platforms-loved5
- VS Code Containers overview documentation – https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/containers/overview
- Awesome VS Code List – https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/containers/overview
- Compose Spec – https://www.compose-spec.io/
Find out more about 56K.Cloud
We love Cloud, IoT, Containers, DevOps, and Infrastructure as Code. If you are interested in chatting connect with us on Twitter or drop us an email: [email protected]. We hope you found this article helpful. If there is anything you would like to contribute or you have questions, please let us know!