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OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

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Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#103
post #56

IMO other than the Microsoft IP issue, I think the biggest thing that has shifted since this acquisition was first in the works is Claude Code has absolutely exploded. Forking an IDE and all the expense that comes with that feels like a waste of effort, considering the number of free/open source CLI agentic tools that are out there. Let's review the current state of things: - Terminal CLI agents are several orders of…

CC would explode even further if they had official Team/Enterprise plan (likely in the work, Claude Code Waffle flag), and worked on Windows without WSL (supposedly pretty easy to fix, they just didn't bother). Cursor learnt the % of Windows user was really high when they started looking, even before they really supported it.

They're likely artificially holding it back either because its a loss leader they want to use a very specific way, or because they're planning the next big boom/launch (maybe with a new model to build hype?).

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#104
post #56

IMO other than the Microsoft IP issue, I think the biggest thing that has shifted since this acquisition was first in the works is Claude Code has absolutely exploded. Forking an IDE and all the expense that comes with that feels like a waste of effort, considering the number of free/open source CLI agentic tools that are out there. Let's review the current state of things: - Terminal CLI agents are several orders of…

Agreed on everything. Just to add, not only anthropic is offering CC at like a 500% loss, they restricted sonnet/opus 4 access to windsurf, and jacked up their enterprise deal to Cursor. The increase in price was so big that it forced cursor to make that disastrous downgrade to their plans. I think only way Cursor and other UX wrappers still win is if on device models or at least open source models catch up in the ne…

Seems like the survival strategy for cursor would be to develop their own frontier coding model. Maybe they can leverage the data from their still somewhat significant lead in the space to make a solid effort.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#105
I went from Emacs to VS Code, then to Cursor, next to Claude Code, which is so good that I feel like I am having half a dozen junior devs at my fingertips, 24/7.

Since Claude Code is cli based, I reviewed my cli toolset: Migrated from iTerm2 to Ghostty and Tmux, from Cursor to NeoVim (my God is it good!).

Just had a 14h workday with this tooling. It’s so good that I complete the work of weeks and months within days! Absolutely beast.

At this point I am thinking IDEs do not reflect the changing reality of software development. They are designed for navigating project folders, writing / changing files. But I don’t review files that much anymore. I rather write prompts, watch Claude Code create a plan, implement it, even write meaningful commit messages.

Yes I can navigate the project with neovim, yes I can make commits in git and in lazygit, but my task is best spent in designing, planning, prompting, reviewing and testing.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#106
post #60
post #30

I never knew anyone who used Windsurf. These AI acquisitions have been unbelievable(in a bad way). WIX acquired some garbage Lovable.dev clone for 80 million. I think many of us are waiting for this bubble to pop(economy will likely pop too)

Base44 is absolutely not garbage. I’ve tried it and can say it’s as good or better of a vibe-builder than Lovable or Bolt. Have you benchmarked it against the competition or can you otherwise substantiate the “garbage” claim? FWIW I do know one amazing engineer using Windsurf

all those projects are garbage and just create half bake prototypes that never see the light of day

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#107
post #56

IMO other than the Microsoft IP issue, I think the biggest thing that has shifted since this acquisition was first in the works is Claude Code has absolutely exploded. Forking an IDE and all the expense that comes with that feels like a waste of effort, considering the number of free/open source CLI agentic tools that are out there. Let's review the current state of things: - Terminal CLI agents are several orders of…

> with a simple extension for some UX improvements

What are the UX improvements?

I was using the Pycharm plugin and didn’t notice any actual integration.

I had problems with pycharm’s terminal—not least of which was default 5k line scroll back which while easy to change was worst part of CC for me at first.

I finally jumped to using iterm and then using pycharm separately to do code review, visual git workflows, some run config etc.

But the actual value of Pycharm—-and I’ve been a real booster of that IDE has shrank due to CC and moving out of the built in terminal is a threat to usage of the product for me.

If the plugin offered some big value I might stick with it but I’m not sure what they could even do.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#108
post #6

It's unclear if OpenAI cancelled the deal, or Google poached them? Either way, this season of "OpenAI Drama" is wild. First Meta, now Google. Your turn Amazon / Microsoft.

Apparently OpenAI allowed the deal to expire; likely Google had already been in discussion with Windsurf as I'm sure they knew the deal was likely to die well before today.

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#109
post #56

IMO other than the Microsoft IP issue, I think the biggest thing that has shifted since this acquisition was first in the works is Claude Code has absolutely exploded. Forking an IDE and all the expense that comes with that feels like a waste of effort, considering the number of free/open source CLI agentic tools that are out there. Let's review the current state of things: - Terminal CLI agents are several orders of…

for those who seldom use the terminal, is Claude Code still usable? I heard it doesn't do tab autocomplete in IDE like Cursor

Re: OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some excellent points. On “add selection to chat”, I just want to add that the Claude Code VS code extension automatically passes the current selection to the model. :) I am genuinely curious if any Cursor or Windsurf users who have also tried Claude Code could speak to why they prefer the IDE-fork tools? I’ve only ever used Claude Code myself - what am I missing?

I'd like to ask the opposite question: why do people prefer command line tools? I tried both and I prefer working in IDE. The main reason is that I don't trust the LLMs too much and I like to see and potentially quickly edit the changes they make. With an IDE, I can iterate much faster than with the command line tool. I haven't tried Claude Code VS Code extension. Did anyone replaced Cursor with this setup?

You're looking at (coloured) diffs in your shell is all when it comes to coding. It's pretty easy to setup MCP and have claude be the director. Like I have zen MCP running with an OpenRouter API key, and will ask claude to consult with pro (gemini) or o3, or both to come up with an architecture review / plan.

I honestly don't know how great that is, because it just reiterates what I was planning anyways, and I can't tell if it's just glazing, or it's just drawing the same general conclusions. Seriously though, it does a decent job, and you can discuss / ruminate over approaches.

I assume you can do all the same things in an editor. I'm just comfortable with a shell is all, and as a hardcore Vi user, I don't really want to use Visual Studio.

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