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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

#331
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, my CC usage is regularly $50-$100 per day , so their Max plan is absolutely great value that I don’t expect to last.

Is there a cheap version for hobbyists? Or what’s the best thing for hobbyists to use, just cut and paste?

Claude Code with a Claude subscription is the cheap version for current SOTA.

"Agentic" workflows burn through tokens like there's no tomorrow, and the new Opus model is so expensive per-token that the Max plan pays itself back in one or two days of moderate usage. When people reports their Claude Code sessions costing $100+ per day, I read that as the API price equivalent - it makes no sense to actually "pay as you go" with Claude right now.

This is arguably the cheapest option available on the market right now in terms of results per dollar, but only if you can afford the subscription itself. There's also time/value component here: on Max x5, it's quite easy to hit the usage limits of Opus (fortunately the limit is per 5 hours or so); Max x20 is only twice the price of Max x5 but gives you 4x more Opus; better model = less time spent fighting with and cleaning up after the AI. It's expensive to be poor, unfortunately.

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

#332
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Windsurf… OpenAI. And OpenAI cares because they’re competing (in part) against Copilot, so if Msoft gets all the benefits of Windsurf then OpenAI would effectively be paying 3B to feed their competitor.

This would also happen if OpenAI developed the same thing internally, right? I don't see how not acquiring them improves anything.

I guess building it internally is cheaper

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

#333
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently somebody missed crypto mania between 2019-2022

AI has nothing in common with crypto other than it being hyped a lot. The better comparison is the dot-com bubble.

Well it's also being slammed into everything everywhere, its just more useful so it has even more places where it's being put

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

#334
post #238
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, my CC usage is regularly $50-$100 per day , so their Max plan is absolutely great value that I don’t expect to last.

Pretty easy to hit $100 an hour using Opus on API credits. The model providers are heavily subsidized, the datacenters appear to be too. If you look at the Coreweave stuff and the private datacenters it starts looking like the telecom bubble. Even Meta is looking to finance datacenter expansion - https://www.reuters.com/business/meta-seeks-29-billion-priva... The reason they are talking about building new nuclear pow…

> Pretty easy to hit $100 an hour

I don’t see how that can be true, but if it is…

Either you, or I are definitely use Claude Code incorrectly.

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

#335
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a lot of usage, I’d guess top 10% among my peers. I do 6-10hrs of constant iterating across mid-size codebases of 750k tokens. CC is set to use Opus by default, which further drives up costs. Estimating productivity gains is a flame war I don’t want to start, but as a signal: if the CC Max plan goes up 10x in price, I’m still keeping my subscription. I maintain top-tier subscription to every frontier service (~$…

Thank you for your perspective. I’ve been staring at Claude Code for a bit and I think I will just pull the trigger.

It’s a wild frontier, but as a recent convert to CC, I would say go for it.

It’s so stupid fast to get running that you aren’t out anything if you don’t like it.

There was no way I was going to switch to a different IDE.

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

#336
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why those tools need to fork Visual Studio Code. Wouldn't an extension suffice?

Cline and Roo Code (my favorite Cline fork) are fantastic and run as normal VS Code extensions. Occasionally they lose their connection to the terminal in VSCode, but I’ve got no other integration complaints. And I really prefer the bring-your-own-key model as opposed to letting the IDE be my middleman.

Using cline for a bit made me realize cursor was doomed. Everything is just a gpt/anthropic wrapper of fancy prompts.

I can do most of what I want with cline, and I've gone back from large changes to just small changes and been moving much quicker. Large refactors/changes start to deviate from what you actually want to accomplish unless you have written a dissertation, and even then they fail.

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

#337
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why Windsurf would care after they've exited.

Not Windsurf… OpenAI. And OpenAI cares because they’re competing (in part) against Copilot, so if Msoft gets all the benefits of Windsurf then OpenAI would effectively be paying 3B to feed their competitor.

Does that ip deal expire at some point?

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

#338
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a lot of usage, I’d guess top 10% among my peers. I do 6-10hrs of constant iterating across mid-size codebases of 750k tokens. CC is set to use Opus by default, which further drives up costs. Estimating productivity gains is a flame war I don’t want to start, but as a signal: if the CC Max plan goes up 10x in price, I’m still keeping my subscription. I maintain top-tier subscription to every frontier service (~$…

I am curious what kind of code development you are doing with so many subscriptions? Are you doing front end backend full stack or model development itself? Are you destilling models for training your own? I have never heard someone using so much subscription? Is this for your full time job or startup? Why not use qwen or deep seek and host it yourself? I am impressed with what you are doing.

I’m a founder/CTO of an enterprise SaaS, and I code everything from data modeling, to algos, backend integrations, frontend architecture, UI widgets, etc. All in TypeScript, which is perfectly suited to LLMs because we can fit the types and repo map into context without loading all code.

As to “why”: I’ve been coding for 25 years, and LLMs is the first technology that has a non-linear impact on my output. It’s simultaneously moronic and jaw-dropping. I’m good at what I do (eg, merged fixes into Node) and Claude/o3 regularly finds material edge cases in my code that I was confident in. Then they add a test case (as per our style), write a fix, and update docs/examples within two minutes.

I love coding and the art&craft of software development. I’ve written millions of lines of revenue generating code, and made millions doing it. If someone forced me to stop using LLMs in my production process, I’d quit on the spot.

Why not self host: open source models are a generation behind SOTA. R1 is just not in the same league as the pro commercial models.

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

#339
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no moat. If you’re a true believer that strong agents are around the corner, then all of these add on companies will be obsolete in a few years. The first company to strong agents can trivially rebuild Cursor or Windsurf.

If you believe AGI is around the corner, doesn’t it mean it’ll replace ALL products?

That would be true if the product was the goal. In my experience,

  marketing > market > product
Even with AGI in hand, there will still be competition between offerings based on externalities, inertia, or battle-testedness, or authority. Maybe super-intelligence would change the calculus of that, but you'd still probably find opportunities beyond just letting your pool of agents vibe code it.

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

#340
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s a viable strategy. It is very very hard and not many people can do it. Just look at how much Meta is paying to poach the few people in the world capable of training a next gen frontier model.

Why are there actually only a few people in the world able to do this? The basic concept is out there. Lots of smart people studying hard to catch up to also be poached. No shortage of those I assume. Good trainingsdata still seems the most important to me. (and lots of hardware) Or does the specific training still involves lots of smart decisions all the time? And those small or big decisions make all the difference…

Because it’s not about “who can do it”, it’s about “who can do it the best”.

It’s the difference between running a marathon (impressive) and winning a marathon (here’s a giant sponsorship check).

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