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Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

kite.com

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Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#21

Post by uJustsaidit »

m00dy wrote: post #7

>> It may cost over $100 million to build a production-quality tool capable of synthesizing code reliably, and nobody has tried that quite yet. $100 million is nothing tbh.

Value assessment in fiat currency is arbitrary.

How many working hours, tons of materials will it take?

Could they be used on more relevant needs to humanity?

If so, why use them on a moonshot we will die before humanity achieves? Essentially approving burning up resources on unverifiable, perhaps unachievable outcomes?

We still fund a lot of agency to iterate on high minded potential as if future humans have an immutable obligation to carry on the work.

Secular norms and justifications are not sacrosanct. The dollar is a made up token of power.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#23

Post by candiddevmike »

vessenes wrote: post #11

Condolences to the Kite team. But, congratulations, too - you have some of the highest value engineering experience in the world. I'm sure you'll land somewhere great; try and take some time off if you can afford it! Mulling over business models, and noticing the 'devs won't pay' narrative in the blog post, it's interesting to see the existing business models in AI; basically they seem to be: * API-driven cloud calls…

Devs almost always lack any kind of purchase authority. Any tool that appeals to devs needs to appeal to their management more, either showing some kind of cost savings over existing tools, increased dev productivity, or the new fangled "dev experience" where this tool, by shear awesomeness, will let devs put aside the low salary, process hell, and keep them employed.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#24

Post by ACV001 »

It failed because they did it exactly in reverse of how it should have been done. First they assembled the team, then they outlined the product then marketing and then only then they realized nobody would pay for that. You're supposed to first sell your product and then build it! I wonder whether anyone raised this issue in the early stage...

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#25

Post by arcturus17 »

jrpt wrote: post #18

"Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools. Their manager might, but engineering managers only want to pay for discrete new capabilities, i.e. making their developers 18% faster when writing code did not resonate strongly enough." I never used Kite, but I've tried Github Copilot twice, and found it marginal at best (and distracting at worst - which is why I turned it off both times). If Kite wa…

Loads of devs I’ve spoken to, from junior to principal level, absolutely love Github Copilot though. Don’t know who is paying it for them, nor if Kite was significantly worse, but I think that at least Copilot has a brilliant future ahead of it.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#27

Post by vagab0nd »

refulgentis wrote: post #19

This is a very self-serving recap: "we were too early and we're still too early and Copilot proves it because its not 10x": it is 10x, sorry.

Yeah, I was very confused by that paragraph. Copilot is not perfect, but it's "good enough" that I'm happily paying $10/mo.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#28

Post by ShamelessC »

jrpt wrote: post #18

"Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools. Their manager might, but engineering managers only want to pay for discrete new capabilities, i.e. making their developers 18% faster when writing code did not resonate strongly enough." I never used Kite, but I've tried Github Copilot twice, and found it marginal at best (and distracting at worst - which is why I turned it off both times). If Kite wa…

Your anecdote is trivially rebutted with another. I tried Github Copilot _more than twice_ (gasp), and now pay 10$/month for it. Happily.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#29

Post by throwthere »

> Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools.

Throwing salt on the wound here but that’s just false. I mean, there’s copilot and it’s alternative that I can’t think of the name right now. more broadly there’s Jet brains ides, visual studio, Productivity apps, etc. look at product hunt or appsumo or popular show hns. Devs pay for tools, just not Kite.

Edit: I should clarify, enough devs pay for tools to make the market sustainable. Not all devs pay for tools.

Re: Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

#30

Post by legerdemain »

Kite made me a very good (for a startup) job offer a few years back. They had a very friendly and welcoming bunch of people, and even Adam, the founder, came off as a typical human being in conversation. Easily the best job I've ever turned down, even knowing that Copilot would eat their lunch a year or two later.
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