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OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

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Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#101
post #16

Windsurf probably sees this as a win. I still think they're behind in some areas, Cursor's Agent feels faster and more responsive but Windsurf nails the rest. The documentation is far better, and the overall developer experience is more solid. Cursor still feels like a hacked-on plug-in in a broken VS Code fork. Even small touches, like built-in Linux install instructions, show Windsurf's polish.

> Its the little things like having baked in instructions to install Windsurf on linux. When I went to download Cursor the other day I noticed that they do not offer any .deb/.rpm packages and just offer the FlatPak (could be a Snap I'm not sure). This just tells me they really dont understand the community and just wanted to ship something for Linux and be done with it.

appimage is more Linux than .deb/.rpm.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#102
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot owns the platform, had an amazing head start and yet still is the worst option available. I don’t mean to be harsh but this was a titanic fumble.

GitHub has been failing upward for more than 5 years. They could have totally dominated software development and security - failed. Could have been the undisputed champion of code hosting - failed. Should have dominated development co-pilots - failed. I actually find it a little reassuring that they can't seem to get out of their own way.

To be fair, they have been behind the competition for many years. Gitlab had extremely good CI, security scanning, organisational concepts, etc. for years before GitHub introduced their ones (and Actions still has a worse UX, and GitHub still doesn't have anything below an organisation).

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#103

Windsurf and Cursor feel like temporary stopgaps, products of a narrow window in time before the landscape shifts again. Microsoft has clearly taken notice. They're already starting to lock down the upstream VSCode codebase, as seen with recent changes to the C/C++ extension [0]. It's not hard to imagine that future features like TypeScript 7.0 might be limited or even withheld from forks entirely. At the same time,…

Wow, folks almost had me convinced MS turned a new leaf 5 years ago. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme: embrace, extend, extinguish.

Nah, folks keep giving human behaviours to big corporations instead of understanding everyone is in the game for the shareholders.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#105
post #54

Windsurf and Cursor feel like temporary stopgaps, products of a narrow window in time before the landscape shifts again. Microsoft has clearly taken notice. They're already starting to lock down the upstream VSCode codebase, as seen with recent changes to the C/C++ extension [0]. It's not hard to imagine that future features like TypeScript 7.0 might be limited or even withheld from forks entirely. At the same time,…

> At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far greater stability and polish. I agree with the first part, I'm much less optimistic about the second part. I suspect they will create something that is worse, but cheaper if you already pay for Github/Office 365/whatever. Then many large enterprises will switch to save money whilst the engineers…

They already succeedd well enough that VSCode is the only Electron app I tolerate on my private systems, naturally on device assigned ones I have less control.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#106
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same time, Microsoft will likely replicate Windsurf and Cursor's features within a year. And deliver them with far greater stability and polish. I agree with the first part, I'm much less optimistic about the second part. I suspect they will create something that is worse, but cheaper if you already pay for Github/Office 365/whatever. Then many large enterprises will switch to save money whilst the engineers…

If the VS Code team are delivering the product, I have some amount of trust. If it’s the VS team, good luck to everyone involved

VSCode is still miles behind for .NET and C++ tooling, have a bit of fate on VS team.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#107
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not the champion of code hosting?

They were before they got acquired by Microsoft. The fact that they are is not the results of the Microsoft takeover.

Then I don't understand the inclusion in the list above.

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#108
We're reaching a point where we don't need to switch to another IDE (from VS Code/IntelliJ/insert-your-IDE-here) for "AI/vibe coding"

IDEs can support "AI coding agents" on their own.

The entire workflow for "AI coding agents" boils down to:

1. You write a prompt

2. The "agent" wraps it in a system prompt and sends it to the LLM

3. The LLM sends back a response

4. The agent performs specific actions based on that response (editing files, creating new ones, etc.)

Microsoft already started doing that with Copilot. And they have a vibrant ecosystem of VS Code extensions (I maintain one of them [1])

"AI agents" should be a feature, not a separate piece of software (IDE) that's integral to software devs.

[1] https://github.com/Kilo-Org/kilocode

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#109

Windsurf and Cursor feel like temporary stopgaps, products of a narrow window in time before the landscape shifts again. Microsoft has clearly taken notice. They're already starting to lock down the upstream VSCode codebase, as seen with recent changes to the C/C++ extension [0]. It's not hard to imagine that future features like TypeScript 7.0 might be limited or even withheld from forks entirely. At the same time,…

Cursor ($9 bil) has a higher valuation than JetBrains ($7 bil). Think about that.

I never did like JetBrains primary product, IntelliJ. It felt clunky even compared to Eclipse for Java, let alone VSCode for … everything. DataGrip is the lone standout imo, but as of the last update I paid for, it didn’t have even basic copilot

Re: OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B

#110

Windsurf and Cursor feel like temporary stopgaps, products of a narrow window in time before the landscape shifts again. Microsoft has clearly taken notice. They're already starting to lock down the upstream VSCode codebase, as seen with recent changes to the C/C++ extension [0]. It's not hard to imagine that future features like TypeScript 7.0 might be limited or even withheld from forks entirely. At the same time,…

I completely disagree and feel MS would never do it. Not a MS Employee, but they have moved on from such battles. They should have restricted the Marketplace several years ago, however, they are doing it now. With C++, they are part of MFC's, they are the legal owners, not like Google vs Oracle in case of Java. Lastly, with AI Code IDEs I think yes, there is a case, the need for IDE might be very less. Like a steerin…

ISO C++ has nothing to do with MFC.
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