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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

#161

Post by nl »

urthor wrote: post #69
arcturus17 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's interesting, the ones I've spoken to are extremely suspicious. "GitHub Copilot blocks your ability to learn." Is a common refrain. I don't see ANY industry-wide consensus on whether GitHub Copilot truly helps developers right now. The only scenario I can get anyone to agree on is generating templates. Aka, JSON or CSS files that you then edit.

Everyone I've spoken to who has actually used it thinks it works extremely well. This includes pretty experienced developers.

I've never heard anyone claim it blocks the ability to learn - if anything it's the opposite. Many people like how it shows you APIs you weren't aware of.

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

#162

Post by nl »

candiddevmike wrote: post #133
Jenk wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may well find out the answer to that when this lawsuit[0] concludes. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/8/23446821/microsoft-openai...

If Copilot generates the exact same code as the source, I don't see how that process could be exempt, it's like using the clipboard on your PC with extra steps.

It can generate the same code, but generally won't.

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

#163

Post by lolinder »

adamsmith wrote: post #136
lolinder wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what I'm saying is that it does use imports, at least in Rust. I'm assuming that somehow behind the scenes they're concatenating the contents of the imports into the prompt. I can imagine this is easier in a language like Rust that has a really strict module system, and to be fair the project that I've been using it on is a side project that isn't over 10,000 lines of code yet. If I were up to 30 imports per file…

Does it seem to only understand imports of public libraries? If so, it's likely that, rather than understanding the contents of those libraries, it's learning from others' use of those library APIs. If not, it is likely just understanding the words in the API at a shallow depth.

No, it's imports from other files in my project. It's either using the import or the fact that I have another tab open.

There are definitely times where it produces a close approximation that's obviously just statistical, but there are other times where there's no question that it picked up something from a different source file that couldn't have possibly been in its training set.

I haven't yet decided if it's using imports or opened files in the editor, but it's definitely not just using the single file I have active.

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

#165

Post by smohare »

arcturus17 wrote: post #25
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.

No post body was provided.

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

#166

Post by simonw »

jascination wrote: post #74
eloff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with copilot has been very different. It easily pays for itself, and getting my employer (seed stage startup) to spring for it for the entire team was an easy sell. Yeah it's pretty dumb most of the time. But I know that, and I don't use code from it without carefully checking it out and modifying it. But it's still a huge help. Just the time saved writing tests alone pays for it. And I've had a few spo…

Out of interest, how are you using it to write tests? Do you just write "make a test for functionX" or something? (Don't have much experience with it)

I wrote up some notes on a recent experience I had writing tests with Copilot here: https://til.simonwillison.net/gpt3/writing-test-with-copilot

Once you get the hang of how to prompt it (mainly through clever use of comments) it can be a HUGE time saver.

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

#167

Post by throwawaysleep »

dboreham wrote: post #111
satvikpendem wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you show an example, or even have the test file open, it will make the other tests for you.

I wonder if this says something about the nature of test code?

Tests often have tons and tons of boilerplate

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

#168

Post by dhosek »

It’s a bit weird to me that developers (myself included) are reluctant to pay for tools. When I first started out in the 90s, I spent significant amounts of money on developer tools: Zortech C/C++. Borland Pascal, Borland C/C++, Paradox for database work, not to mention the hundreds of dollars I spent on printed books. Now, the only things I’m spending money on are subscriptions to IntelliJ and CLion and infrequently books. I wonder how much this reluctance to spend money is holding back software development.

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

#169

Post by dibt »

icelancer wrote: post #160
satvikpendem wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why they're a joke?

There are two or three people commenting that in this post and simply not elaborating. It's ridiculous.

It's been discussed here on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14857944

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14902630

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19018037

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

#170

Post by chucky123 »

make3 wrote: post #115
dmarlow wrote: post #110

I'm confused. "we were 10+ years too early to market, i.e. the tech is not ready yet." "Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools." "We built the most-advanced AI for helping developers, but it fell short of the 10× improvement required to break through because today’s state of the art for ML on code is not good enough." Sounds like you know why people didn't pay for it. If it truly did make pe…

plus, again, they had zero developer trust because of all the ultra shady stuff they did

What shady stuff they did?
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