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Show HN: Void, an open-source Cursor/GitHub Copilot alternative

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Re: Show HN: Void, an open-source Cursor/GitHub Copilot alternative

#71
post #64
post #63

This investment by YC in both Void and Continue.dev perfectly exemplifies the VC spray-and-pray approach by backing two nearly identical open-source VSCode plugins for AI-assisted coding. They're simply throwing money at similar projects in the same space, hoping one will stick, without any special insight or reason why one should be more successful over another.

I’m interested; are you suggested this is a bad thing, or just highlighting something of interest?

Not a bad thing, but just a reflection that among some of these products there is nothing special when compared to rest of the bunch, there are very similar products (even backed by the same investor), and us users have no clear idea what is different between them, if anything, and why we should use one over another.

I guess similar theme can be seen in LLM/AI space in general, or previously in the streaming services, just throw as much money at the problem in the hope that your solution will stick, without any significant and clear differentiation.

Re: Show HN: Void, an open-source Cursor/GitHub Copilot alternative

#77
post #66

I think more competition in the "AI Editor" space is good, but I have to ask – why not make it a VSCode extension? I feel it'd be much more accessible. Are there limitations in the extension APIs that make it hard to implement?

Because it's difficult to monetize extensions and justify a large VC valuation...

(Void is HN backed)

Re: Show HN: Void, an open-source Cursor/GitHub Copilot alternative

#78
post #62
post #31

As someone who has recently tried to refactor our app atop of VSCode (treating it like a platform), we got burned by the UI design decisions that are not straightforward to overcome, let alone maintain. The closed-source MS marketplace did not help either towards our OSS goals. However, I found Theia ( https://theia-ide.org ) on HN (like a bunch of other cool things; this is one way I justify the time I spend/sink on…

Is Theia related to Eclipse (the traditional Java IDE)? Or is the reference to "eclipse" just an unfortunate naming collision?

Theia is the Monaco editor from VS Code with a different ui

Re: Show HN: Void, an open-source Cursor/GitHub Copilot alternative

#79
post #66

I think more competition in the "AI Editor" space is good, but I have to ask – why not make it a VSCode extension? I feel it'd be much more accessible. Are there limitations in the extension APIs that make it hard to implement?

Idk, continue is absolute trash at the moment. It manages to break my entire VScode environment, including vim hotkeys.

Re: Show HN: Void, an open-source Cursor/GitHub Copilot alternative

#80
post #66

I think more competition in the "AI Editor" space is good, but I have to ask – why not make it a VSCode extension? I feel it'd be much more accessible. Are there limitations in the extension APIs that make it hard to implement?

A lot of folks prefer JetBrains over VSC. For example my top choice for an AI Editor today is Zed.dev which lets you trivially setup to use a variety of key maps including JetBrains.

https://zed.dev/

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