Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by sebazzz » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 5:50 AM UTC

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 (=as the employee of the company) often don't want to bother to pay, because a business case, then getting the invoice right (if that is even possible and the seller allows paying by PO), then getting it paid in time, is often not worth it. Often free alternatives exist, which makes it even more a no-brainer. Never mind that as a whole we are an enormous company but software dev is not core business so really we are a small part of a whole, yet some sellers only want to sell the most expensive enterprise tier.

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

#322

Post by petesergeant » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 5:53 AM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #297

nikkwong wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you like them. Important caveat here. My only exposure to JetBrains had been through Intellij which was thoroughly unpleasant around 2012-2013. That impression has left me forever sour towards them. Surprised to hear people say that it could be a step up from VSCode. It looks like "Fleet" is their VSCode competitor? I'm not sure if the homepage does a good job at communicating how this improves over of VSCode. F…

> Surprised to hear people say that it could be a step up from VSCode. VS Code is very* lightweight. Both in speed and in features. Comparing it with IntelliJ makes it seem very basic. Now, for some people that’s okay, but JetBrains IDEs are full-blown IDEs. *: Compared to something like JetBrains tools, or literally any other electron software.

Could you give some examples of the differences I would see as a TypeScript developer using a “full-blown IDE” over VS Code.

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

#323

Post by galaxyLogic » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 5:56 AM UTC

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

Does it mean employees don't pay for the tools? Or that single-person ("individual") independent developers don't?

Why wouldn't a developer pay $100 for a tool that saves a day of work for them?

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

#324

Post by iepathos » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 5:59 AM UTC

I think if they open sourced Kite from the start rather than as they call it quits that they could've had a ton of free development done on their products by interested developers. Developers not paying for tools is simply not true. Developers do pay for good tools. Sublime text is one such tool many devs pay for and it's quite profitable and completely built and operated by a two person team.

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

#325

Post by galaxyLogic » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 6:08 AM UTC

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…

“hey can you look at my computer? "

Think about having a friend who is doctor. We might often just ask them hey I have this pain in the neck what do you think could it be? It is not seen as asking them to work for you but merely asking for advise, like you might ask any friend. Advise is free right? And the person asking you for advise is happy to give their advise to you if you ask them. Reciprocity!

The problem with the computer MIGHT be very easy to fix if you know how to fix it.

But if you accept their invitation to help them then you don't want to just give up after 10 minutes. It would make you look not smart if you could not help with the problem after all. You have been hood-winked into working hard to look good.

The worst part is if you do something to their computer and some new problems appear later, you will be responsible.

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

#326

Post by 5e92cb50239222b » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 6:09 AM UTC

petesergeant wrote: post #322

Semaphor wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surprised to hear people say that it could be a step up from VSCode. VS Code is very* lightweight. Both in speed and in features. Comparing it with IntelliJ makes it seem very basic. Now, for some people that’s okay, but JetBrains IDEs are full-blown IDEs. *: Compared to something like JetBrains tools, or literally any other electron software.

Could you give some examples of the differences I would see as a TypeScript developer using a “full-blown IDE” over VS Code.

For TypeScript there's little difference since most of TypeScript support comes from the same language server running in the background (there's an option in the menus to restart it if it breaks, same as in vscode).

Although autocomplete is better (especially for pure JS), it doesn't warrant paying for a license IMHO. Personally, I use IDEA for TS because I use it for other languages where it blows everything else out of the water (so muscle memory).

Also, if you're doing server-side development, it has a very good built-in client for two dozen databases (which pretty much replicates the functionality of their DataGrip product), so you get decent data editing / import / export / DDL support, and excellent autocompletion for your SQL (interspersed among TS code, or not — doesn't matter).

Edit: also, 100% of their products' funtionality can be used from keyboard. I don't touch the mouse at all. I think vscode can support something like that, but with very heavy customization (and even then I'm not sure). Out of the box it pretty much forces you to use the mouse for many things.

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

#327

Post by vl » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 6:14 AM UTC

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…

Be it as it may, everyone I know who tried Copilot trial is now paying for it. While my company expenses it, I started paying with my own money before that.

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

#328

Post by nikanj » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 6:14 AM UTC

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…

If my employee would rather not pay for a tool, why would I spend my own money to help them save money?

The blog post was quite clear on the ”the tech doesn’t work” part, which seems like a more likely reason for their demise. Selling developer tools is hard, but selling non-functional tools is exponentially harder

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

#329

Post by jmiserez » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 6:18 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #315

capitalsigma wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because developers want to be able to hack on their own tools: fix bugs, add features, whatever. Graphics designers do not have the skills to hack on their own tools, so there isn't a huge population of them sitting around going "damn, I wish I had feature X -- I know, I'll build my own editor and open source it!"

I have absolutely no desire to hack my own tools. Hacking my own tools doesn’t put any money in my pocket nor is that what I have ever been hired for.

I don't often hack my own tools either, but it's great to have the possibility to do so.

When you really need that bug fixed for your edge case or platform, it's much easier to submit a patch rather than wait around for someone else to fix it.

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

#330

Post by Semaphor » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 6:26 AM UTC

petesergeant wrote: post #322

Semaphor wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surprised to hear people say that it could be a step up from VSCode. VS Code is very* lightweight. Both in speed and in features. Comparing it with IntelliJ makes it seem very basic. Now, for some people that’s okay, but JetBrains IDEs are full-blown IDEs. *: Compared to something like JetBrains tools, or literally any other electron software.

Could you give some examples of the differences I would see as a TypeScript developer using a “full-blown IDE” over VS Code.

While I use it for TS/Vue projects, my main experience of differences is with C# and Java, so I’m afraid I can’t.