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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

#301

Post by oorza »

TheGeminon wrote: post #266
javajosh wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it seems fair to me to spend real money on Jetbrain's tools, if you like them. It is strange how reluctant programmers are to spend on tools even though they are, as a rule, quite willing to let themselves be paid handsomely for their services. Yet graphic designers pay for Adobe's tools. Who can read this riddle?

I think it’s because the free and OSS tools are of such a high quality for developers. There is a much bigger chasm between GIMP and Photoshop than there is between VS Code (with plugins) and JetBrains. It’s hard for many to get over the fact that JetBrains is infinitely more expensive than VS code in dollar terms.

> There is a much bigger chasm between GIMP and Photoshop than there is between VS Code (with plugins) and JetBrains.

I don't believe this to be true. I think the difference is graphic designers tend to use much more of their toolings' functions, whereas almost every day I'm surprised someone I work with doesn't even know some IDE feature was possible, let alone how to use it. Hell, almost every frontend developer I've ever seen use either VSCode or WebStorm orchestrates everything from the built-in terminal and is baffled when they never see me use one - because it's all configured via run configurations, and that's a _basic_ feature.

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

#303

Post by theamk »

oorza wrote: post #301
TheGeminon wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s because the free and OSS tools are of such a high quality for developers. There is a much bigger chasm between GIMP and Photoshop than there is between VS Code (with plugins) and JetBrains. It’s hard for many to get over the fact that JetBrains is infinitely more expensive than VS code in dollar terms.

> There is a much bigger chasm between GIMP and Photoshop than there is between VS Code (with plugins) and JetBrains. I don't believe this to be true. I think the difference is graphic designers tend to use much more of their toolings' functions, whereas almost every day I'm surprised someone I work with doesn't even know some IDE feature was possible, let alone how to use it. Hell, almost every frontend developer I'…

That makes sense though.. Terminal commands are easy to put into team wiki or record in personal notes or put into your CI config. There is a command history, it is easy to chain commands, etc..

Unless using IDE's native tooling is making you much more productive (say its debugging does not work without it) it is better to avoid it if possible.

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

#304

Post by nikisweeting »

Kite messed up privacy expectations one too many times by uploading everything in my home folder without consent. They were repeatedly shamed for this on HN and every time it seemed like they didn't understand why people were mad about consensual analytics.

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

#305

Post by OOPMan »

irrational wrote: post #247
LASR wrote: post #235

> Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools. I know this first hand, building a developer tool startup and failing to reach any level of revenue. In the end, the tech was bought out by a larger company to recover a fraction of our VC investment. The challenge is that when you're building software for developers, they already know how it must work. It's like trying to sell magic tricks to magici…

I’m a web developer. My company pays for JetBrains IntelliJ for me. And I love it. But, if I had to pay for it out of my own pocket, I’d use VS Code instead. I’ve used both and IntelliJ is superior to VS Code, but not to such an extent that I would pay my own money for it. But I’m more than happy to have my company buy it for me.

I pay for IntelliJ myself so I always have my preferred tool no matter where I work.

When GitHub Copilot decided they wanted to charge $10 a month after the beta was over I noped out.

For what it does, it sure as shit isn't worth paying more than my yearly subscription to IntelliJ...

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

#306

Post by rexreed »

azhenley wrote: post #8

Kite rejected me for a position years ago which motivated me to go raise $1M from the NSF to research AI-based dev tools before I moved on to Microsoft. They seemed like a really cool team, I wish them the best.

How did you go about that NSF fund raise? Was it a SBIR? Did you already know how to fundraise through SBIR or whatever vehicle you used? Were you funding just yourself or a team? What ended up happening to the thing you fundraised from NSF?

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

#307

Post by mudrockbestgirl »

LASR wrote: post #235

> Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools. I know this first hand, building a developer tool startup and failing to reach any level of revenue. In the end, the tech was bought out by a larger company to recover a fraction of our VC investment. The challenge is that when you're building software for developers, they already know how it must work. It's like trying to sell magic tricks to magici…

> Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools

I believe this is incorrect. I pay for many tools, but I would not pay for Kite. The problem is not that developers don't pay for tools, but that Kite, or AI-assisted code, does not address a pain point. It's a slight improvement, but I don't feel pain when I need to write code without it.

That's different from something like CI tools that I pay for. When I need to wait long for CI to finish I get annoyed. That's when I pay.

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

#308

Post by nopenopenopeno »

dopamean wrote: post #288
mythz wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JetBrains IDE's is the most notable exception of dev tools I personally pay for, insane value and productivity makes it a no-brainer purchase given its instant ROI from time saved. Life's too short to not maximize your productivity for a few $'s.

JetBrains IDEs are the only dev tool I pay for as well. I write kotlin professionally and for fun and the Intellij + Kotlin experience is the most I've enjoyed writing code since my early days learning Ruby.

Kotlin is such a lovely language, and I really like that it was made by JetBrains because that means I can count on a top notch IDE/development experience.

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

#309

Post by beachtaxidriver »

PraetorianGourd wrote: post #294
capitalsigma wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough developers want to hack on their own tools that the market is smaller than you would naively expect, counting the number of developers and how many tools they each use. It's a bit like asking "how come we're having so much trouble selling our extended warranty to professional mechanics, even though professional drivers buy extended warranties all the time?"

The real reason is that there are free alternatives. For many people, “free and open source” is the same as just “free”. Again, I can fix most things on my car. I can afford the tools needed. But I don’t want to because opportunity cost. One thing I have always found weird is the whole, “hey can you look at my computer? It is all slow” is considered okay to ask anyone in IT, but it (at least in the circles I was rais…

I think family mechanics and accountants do get asked for help. Plumbers maybe a little less.

I think there's an accurate perception that IT work is generally air-conditioned and doesn't involve physical danger or sewage, so it's not as big of a deal to ask for help.

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

#310

Post by keeptrying »

vessenes wrote: post #11

Condolences to the Kite team. But, congratulations, too - you have some of the highest value engineering experience in the world. I'm sure you'll land somewhere great; try and take some time off if you can afford it! Mulling over business models, and noticing the 'devs won't pay' narrative in the blog post, it's interesting to see the existing business models in AI; basically they seem to be: * API-driven cloud calls…

If you don't have a massive platform (ie if you aren't Amazon or MS) the vertical end to end solution is much more easy to sell - ie sell the benefit directly.
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