2020: every day a new JS framework is announced 2024: every day a new Chrome fork browser is announced 2025: every day a new AI IDE vscode fork is announced
Why is it so hard for these to be VSCode extensions and not forks?
Google Antigravity
201–210 of 1001 posts
Re: Google Antigravity
#202We have a real, serious problem when even Google (presumably with a large share of the world's engineering might) is just forking VSCode.
Reusing open-source code is a "real, serious problem" now...?
Re: Google Antigravity
#2032020: every day a new JS framework is announced 2024: every day a new Chrome fork browser is announced 2025: every day a new AI IDE vscode fork is announced
AIUI the forks are required because Microsoft is gatekeeping functionality used by Copilot from extensions so they can't be used by these agents.
I was going to ask why all these companies choose to fork the entire IDE rather than just writing an extension like every other sane developer, and this response is the most believable reason why.
Re: Google Antigravity
#204MacOS/Safari User here. Stuck on 'Setting Up Your Account' once I've authorized it in the browser. /shrug
Re: Google Antigravity
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is going to win AI and kill all the other market participants. They have the revenues to support all of this. They spent time learning from all the players and can now fast follow into every market. Now they're fast and nimble and are willing to clone other products wholesale, fork VSCode, etc. They're developing all of this, meanwhile Pichai is calling it a "bubble" to put a chill on funding (read: competitio…
Has Google *ever* successfully entered and taken over an existing market?
Search, back in the late '90s
Re: Google Antigravity
#206can't get past the "Setting up your account" step atm
same here, hope they fix this soon
Re: Google Antigravity
#207It’s…a VSCode fork? Really? What has become of Google? Ten years ago, when I was getting into the world of software, there was still an aura about them. They built everything in this huge monorepo, and it worked. They were this deeply technical company for whom it seems anything could be done. And now they can’t even ship a desktop app without forking VSCode? Look, I get it. There’s this huge ecosystem. Everyone uses…
I can see why people don’t release stuff on a permissive lisense anymore. It is absolutely insane that google is even allowed to do something like this.
Re: Google Antigravity
#2082020: every day a new JS framework is announced 2024: every day a new Chrome fork browser is announced 2025: every day a new AI IDE vscode fork is announced
2020: every day a new electron fork is announced
2024: every day a new electron fork is announced
2025: every day a new electron fork is announced
Re: Google Antigravity
#209- A new "AI" IDE announced - It's VS Code Like clockwork!
Is the extension system in VSCode not powerful enough to make these just normal extensions for a vanilla VSCode executable? Or is everyone just going for lock in, since if you download MyFork, you can't start using some other extension that uses OtherGuysModel?
Back when Cursor was new (before literally everything was AI hype) they explicitly called out that they wanted to do more in-depth integration with the editor than was possible with just the extension APIs.
Presumably that hasn't changed much. If you want to do any large-scale edits of the UI you need to spin up a fork.
Re: Google Antigravity
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? There's nothing wrong with metaphor. And agentic coding is about working at a much higher conceptual level. Further from the ground. Antigravity is a functional metaphor. My only issue with it is that it's too long at five syllables, and "anti-" is an inherently negative connotation. I'm guessing this will eventually get renamed if it gets popular, much like Bard was.
As the parent said, actual anti-gravity is world-changing technology. It's telling the very laws of nature to go fuck themselves, you're gonna do what you want, even if all of known physics says it's impossible. Working at a higher conceptual level is just project management. You're the legislator giving out unfunded mandates rather than the agency staff that has to figure out how to comply. There's power there, but…
> There's power there, but it isn't anti-gravity.
That's why it's metaphor. "Operation Warp Speed" also delivered vaccines quickly, but not faster than the speed of light.
The list of company and product names that are based on a metaphor that is very obviously exaggerated is endless. Google doesn't index a googol number of pages either.