Programmers Guide To Containers with Docker and Visual Studio Code

Containers are probably the most useful software development of the decade, but as a software developer you may not yet have tried to create your own. If you have, you may have discovered that practical, developer-focused guidance is difficult to come by. This book sets out to fill that gap and in particular it covers a pair of overlooked resources- the Visual Studio Code Container Tools Extension and its Dev Containers Extension.
While there are alternatives, Docker is the de facto environment for working with containers and it is the primary focus here. Most existing books about Docker are aimed at DevOps engineers or system administrators who need to orchestrate collections of production servers, where the primary concerns are deployment, security, and backup. In contrast, Programmer's Guide to Containers focuses on using Docker to build robust development environments and streamline software distribution, and as such is for programmers, developers, and software engineers.
Before introducing the Visual Studio Code Extensions that streamline working with Docker, you first need a comprehensive familiarity with Docker, including its quirks and apparent contradictions that lie in wait to confuse even the most experienced developer. For this reason, we first look at using Docker and Docker Compose to build images and manage containers. The practical examples included, such as configuring standard web server and database stacks, will be just as useful to the DevOps community as they are to application programmers. The perspective throughout remains one of understanding what is happening under the hood, frequently using programming analogies to clarify core concepts.
The final two chapters focus specifically on VS Code, first covering general container integration and then focusing specifically on DevContainers. Once you reach the end of the book you will wonder how you have ever ignored containers for so long when they are the key to producing reliable, repeatable, development environments.
Mike James has a PhD in Computer Science and over his career has programmed in more than a dozen languages and written scores of books. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the I Programmer website which provides daily news and comment, written by programmers for programmers, and is the home of the I Programmer Library. This imprint now has more than 30 titles on programming topics which set out to share the expertise and knowledge of the I Programmer team.