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Show HN: Kite, copilot for programmers, available for Python

kite.com

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Re: Show HN: Kite, copilot for programmers, available for Python

#72
post #22

Curious to try Kite, I started to integrate Kite plugin into PyCharm until I saw they keep our code in the cloud which enables Kite do what it does. I'm not sure how many of them would be ok with their code being stored in a private cloud!

Totally legit concern. when we started working on this we realized if we wanted to index tens of thousands of libraries, we wouldn't be able to ship the entire index along with the client. Hence the cloud-based architecture. We've thought a lot about privacy and written up our thoughts here: kite.com/security. The short answer is: we don't index anything on your computer that you don't explicitly ask us to, and our p…

I have no inside knowledge here, but I would guess a Kite Enterprise would be a future offering. Like GHE.

Re: Show HN: Kite, copilot for programmers, available for Python

#73
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, that means that a really simple app where a developer hardcoded something like an API key, and didn't put it in a separate file they told Kite to ignore, will get uploaded. Any system that relies on people following best practices is doomed in the real world :(

You mean like Git?

You can run your own git repository (it's really easy). And most of the Git-service providers offer an "enterprise" version where you can self-host.

Re: Show HN: Kite, copilot for programmers, available for Python

#76
post #56

Maybe a little bit off-topic and controversial, but in my opinion auto-complete is overrated. Doing software development is mostly reading code and documentation. Obviously one also writes code and for sure one can't memorize every function or package name, but searching for it isn't that much of a bottleneck? Some time ago I wrote Java using Eclipse (which had/has reasonable auto-complete), but when I switched to di…

Snippets in Atom is the first time I've ever used any kind of autocomplete, and it seems to mostly just slow me down. If it finds a match on a thing that's at the end of a line, it'll replace what you just typed when you hit enter...changing it from what was actually intended to the snippet. And, even when it's not at the end of a line, I end up context switching a lot more to figure out what just happened and why my text changed.

I feel like with Java it makes a lot of sense to have smart completion, because you end up with incredibly deeply nested identifiers and such. A whole lot of typing. But, I don't code in Java, in the general case (aside from occasionally tinkering with Android APIs, with thoughts to some day making an app). For many more concise languages, it feels like a solution looking for a problem.

I could be wrong. This could be a thing that would provide clear value, if I were to put in the time to learn how to use it correctly. But, so far, I just feel vague frustration when I have the feature turned on.

That said, having docs available as you type is something I can see clear value in. I have to have API docs open 100% of the time when coding...having it jump to the right function as I'm typing it would be awesome. It seems like Kite does this, too, which is probably enough reason for me to use it. I've been poking at Python again lately (after many years away from it), because of Tensorflow and Keras, so I'll give this a go.

I wish they had a Linux version. I rarely work in Windows (though ConEmu and WSL has made it so I'm not terribly unproductive in Windows anymore, as I once was).

Re: Show HN: Kite, copilot for programmers, available for Python

#77
post #56

Maybe a little bit off-topic and controversial, but in my opinion auto-complete is overrated. Doing software development is mostly reading code and documentation. Obviously one also writes code and for sure one can't memorize every function or package name, but searching for it isn't that much of a bottleneck? Some time ago I wrote Java using Eclipse (which had/has reasonable auto-complete), but when I switched to di…

Even if you knew every function in every lib in your head, typing with autocompletion from some good IDE like IntelliJ will make you write code much much faster. And I do not talk about just function name completion (but include them too of course).

Typing just the first or few random letters of veryDescriptiveLongMethodName and completing it with space/tab will always be faster. Using stuff like templates, smart completion, emmet, refactoring tool, constructor/method generators will always be faster, if you know your tools well.

Re: Show HN: Kite, copilot for programmers, available for Python

#78
post #22

Curious to try Kite, I started to integrate Kite plugin into PyCharm until I saw they keep our code in the cloud which enables Kite do what it does. I'm not sure how many of them would be ok with their code being stored in a private cloud!

Totally legit concern. when we started working on this we realized if we wanted to index tens of thousands of libraries, we wouldn't be able to ship the entire index along with the client. Hence the cloud-based architecture. We've thought a lot about privacy and written up our thoughts here: kite.com/security. The short answer is: we don't index anything on your computer that you don't explicitly ask us to, and our p…

At first blush, the "we wouldn't be able to ship the entire index along with the client" makes perfect sense. However, I have found that I can store the entirety of the raw Python 2.7 documentation to disk in under 15 MB. It's mostly text, so it compresses absurdly well (2mb, gzipped). And if it was just an index of all the functions with little to no markup, it would be even smaller (this doesn't even account for the fact that all of Python's documentation is typically already on disk, in the modules themselves).

So, given that these indices could be obtained as needed, I'm not sure I buy this argument anymore.

If we can justify the download of a 20mb for a set of plugins, I think that we can justify a 2mb download to document the entirety of a language's standard library.

As a few points of comparison, Atom's download is around 80MB, Docker 110MB, PyCharm is around 175mb, and a ctags file that covers over 8,000 source files (including boto2/3, aws-sdk-go, the python standard library (both 2.7 and 3.5), the go standard library) is about 6 MB compressed.

Re: Show HN: Kite, copilot for programmers, available for Python

#79

Has your cache/proxy fallen over? I'm getting a 404 for the base domain 404 Not Found Code: NoSuchKey Message: The specified key does not exist. Key: index.html RequestId: 759C55C7EA94F7D8 HostId: 2i2HH8A3vp5KFvhHhHeoQ+6AiFL/kjd5iByJy6Ouo/pbKwE2xaKP8Es4SU3//1/P7M/5KWJXQv8=

Thanks - we're investigating. Seems to be working in most places but there may be an edge node out of line.

same here, from Sweden

404 Not Found Code: NoSuchKey Message: The specified key does not exist. Key: index.html RequestId: 7928D2D3EE5313F6 HostId: 2iAqS6E1PciR/++frE0wVXo/jlBhK24kopo93WRvVieuepmCctk1v+m+yOAIZZz1q5qIA6HVH9w=

Re: Show HN: Kite, copilot for programmers, available for Python

#80

Has your cache/proxy fallen over? I'm getting a 404 for the base domain 404 Not Found Code: NoSuchKey Message: The specified key does not exist. Key: index.html RequestId: 759C55C7EA94F7D8 HostId: 2i2HH8A3vp5KFvhHhHeoQ+6AiFL/kjd5iByJy6Ouo/pbKwE2xaKP8Es4SU3//1/P7M/5KWJXQv8=

Thanks - we're investigating. Seems to be working in most places but there may be an edge node out of line.

Getting the same here
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