Coder Reviews

My main use case for Coder is providing desktop-like environments for access into our various clusters. A quick, specific example of how I use Coder for that is through our Jupiter Hub integrations, where we frequently use VS Code to enable researchers to perform ad hoc research on their laptops while also being able to run DAGs in Argo workflows against our GPU clusters.

The best features Coder offers include easy integration into a remote environment that is accessible from everywhere, VS Code integrations, and AI integrations. The AI integrations I mentioned include various ways people access AI, such as using Cursor and Claude with various models. We have fairly extensive licensing as we are a biologics company, so the integration with Anthropic's Life Sciences has been wonderful as well as the integration with cloud workflow.

Coder has positively impacted my organization by providing a central place for people to run their research and enabling us as administrators to focus on one aspect of researcher interactions with our clusters, so we do not have to provide much education or options for integrating their workflows into our clusters.

From my perspective as an administrator, Coder is very valuable for being able to get access to the work that people are doing so I can troubleshoot it. As a general rule, it is more than sufficient for my needs, and how Coder can be improved is really a researcher question.

I have been using Coder for the last two or three years.

Coder is very stable and incredibly reliable.

Coder's scalability is great, allowing us to allocate more resources to it with a simple scheduler change, which enables us to add as many researchers as we need.

The customer support is excellent and superb. I would rate the customer support a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.

I previously used Jupiter Hub, which we ran integrated into a self-hosted environment. It was limited because many people preferred a different kind of shell environment, and they had been passing Jupiter Hub notebooks between each other, which was not conducive to a productionized environment.

Coder helps with onboarding new users or researchers by making it easy once they are in the system. We just tell them how to log in and they have single sign-on access. It is very easy.

If anything, the ROI would be time saved, although I do not have metrics for anything else.

I was not really involved with the pricing or the setup costs, but I know that we have an advantaged per-seat licensing because we were early into it. The payment process is easy for us, and it provides so much value in our company that I cannot see doing without it.

If we did evaluate other options before choosing Coder, I do not remember what they were, but there was nothing really out there that answered our questions, especially after the frustrations with Jupiter Hub.

I think Coder is very accurate and reliable in terms of output and is extremely reliable as the base for our infrastructure and infrastructure interaction.

Coder is deployed on-premises in my organization.

Coder integrates with our existing infrastructure as the main interface for our two clusters that have GPUs—some are AMD GPUs and the other one is a NVIDIA GPU system at Oracle. Users can access either cluster through Coder's interface, whether using VS Code, Cursor integration, or whatever they choose, from their laptops wherever they are. It is the starting point for any researcher doing research, and it is very simple to get them enabled and set up.

Coder handles user authentication and access control in our organization through Okta integration, where Okta groups are managed by our IT team, allowing access only through certain groups within Okta, so that access is locked down.

Collaboration between researchers or teams is supported by Coder, as they can share notebooks. Every Coder instance that comes up also has a shared file system, a high-speed shared file system behind it, which is incredibly helpful.

Coder enables integration with third-party tools or services through a variety of plugins, with the VS Code one probably being the most used. I know that Cursor, the Cursor UI also has an integration into it, and we do allow Jupiter Hub notebooks, but I do not know if we have many people using those anymore.

Coder helps me manage resources, such as compute or storage, by limiting the size of Coder notebook spaces. We are able to give everybody a GPU or more based on the options in the templates, and the templating system is incredibly valuable for us because it allows us to provide a working environment that is sufficiently powerful but has limits so that people do not overrun the infrastructure allocated to them.

Coder's AI capabilities are very secure, as we have Okta integration so that we are locked down from the perspective of access. It allows for fine-grain controls for users, and we run it self-hosted, making it an ideal self-hosting candidate. It enables people from all over the world to have one-step integration from their laptops wherever they are in the world, and it is very effective for everyone, given our remote teams.

My advice to others looking into using Coder is to commit to the decision without hesitation. I would rate this overall experience a 9 out of 10.

My main use case for Coder is creating consistent remote development environments. I use it to prepare a workspace with tools like Git, Docker, Python, and Node.js, as well as automation testing. I primarily use Coder to have dependencies like Node.js and Docker so I will not need to do it manually.

I think the best features Coder offers in my experience are the isolated workspace and the easy onboarding for a new project.

The remote development environment and consistency between the environments are excellent. The easy onboarding to a new project and the ability to create isolated workspaces have been particularly valuable.

Remote development and consistency between environments make the onboarding easier and definitely save time. It is easier to set up environments.

The cloud-based development workflow is also very useful when working on different machines.

The main positive impact Coder had was time-saving and fewer environment-related issues. It made it easy to start working on automation tasks without spending time on setup. It saved me hours.

Coder can be improved by making setup easier for users who are not very experienced with infrastructure or Terraform style.

The first setup can require technical knowledge. Better guided setup with ready-made templates and screenshots would be helpful.

I have been using Coder for around half a year, mainly for personal development and testing.

I do not need much scalability.

I did not have extensive interaction with Coder's customer support. Most of the time I needed to find a solution in the documentation, and from my experience, the documentation is well-written.

I usually used a Docker-based setup before choosing Coder. Before Coder, I used Docker and VS Code dev containers.

I would rate Coder an eight. I chose eight because Coder is very useful for creating consistent and repeatable development environments, especially for automation and technical work. It saves time and also reduces setup issues. I did not give it a ten because initial setup has a learning curve, especially for users who are less familiar with cloud infrastructure templates or Terraform-based configuration.

This is definitely a return on investment since Coder saved me a lot of time.

I switch between different solutions all the time and use different tools to experiment.

My advice is to invest time in building good workspace templates from the beginning. The real value of Coder comes when your environments are standardized and repeatable. I would also recommend monitoring resource usage so it can stay under control.

Coder is a strong solution for developers who want a consistent cloud-based and repeatable development environment. It is ideal for automation developers like me because it helps reduce setup time, avoid dependency issues, and stay organized. The main thing I would improve is making the first setup easier, but once it is configured, it works. I rate Coder an eight overall.