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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

#341

Post by edanm »

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…

> It's like trying to sell magic tricks to magicians. Sell magic to regular people, and you'll see some significant revenue.

Just FYI, magic tricks are basically only sold to magicians. There's a thriving market of magic shops, especially online, where magicians go to buy new tricks (in the form of books/videos), new "gimmicks", etc.

I'd wager that a significant portion of all magic that is done is actually by magicians, for magicians, and partly in order to sell magic tricks.

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

#342

Post by loosescrews »

johnfn wrote: post #230
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…

I feel the problem with discussions about Copilot is that they consist of roughly two groups of people talking past each other. The first group believes that Copilot should be able to write code for whatever you tell it to write code for. The second group thinks Copilot is a fairly overpowered autocomplete. The first group gets annoyed all the time because Copilot fails to write most code when prompted with comments,…

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that even small snippets of licensed code can be problematic. I don't know exactly what the cutoff is, but when I tried Copilot it often suggested to auto complete snippets of code that were long enough that if I was intentionally coping them from a licensed codebase, I would handle the license. I'm not talking about whole giant functions, but small functions or large chunks of a function.

It is true that more commonly it suggested at most a few lines of obvious code which could really only be written the way it suggested, but a number of people in the comments on this article mentioned using Copilot to come up with test cases, so I think people are actually using it to suggest larger snippets of code.

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

#344

Post by dmitriid »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #271
dehrmann wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Our diagnosis is that individual developers do not pay for tools. Hijacking the quote... I can't count the number of times I see well-paid developers using the Sublime Text trial.

Sublime is too expensive. $99 is too much. They should make a special christmas offer %90 off and many (of those who will never pay otherwise) will pay.

> Sublime is too expensive. $99 is too much.

On the other hand I have 437 games in my Steam account and countless gadgets I don't use. I guess I can skip a couple of games and a gadget or two to pay for software I use.

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

#345

Post by dmitriid »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #142
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…

I think the real reason is that developers are maybe some of the hardest to fool customers on the planet. Since we literally build all of this our B.S. detection meter is really high. Kite thought it can go after the up and coming new developers by doing slightly shady things. However, developers also have an incredible allergy to such tactics and it forever taints your brand. So overall, developers do pay for tools,…

> Since we literally build all of this our B.S. detection meter is really high.

Oh no. The only thing that's high is our conviction that our BS meter is high. We fall prey to, come up with and promote as much BS as the next person.

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

#346

Post by xavdid »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #276
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…

Yep. Sublime Text. I sat through scores of interviews and pairing sessions with developers back when Sublime was a thing and the vast majority (>90%) of devs would rather exit out of that pop-up asking for support then pay the measly $30 or whatever regardless of their massive incomes and increased productivity that Sublime brought them. We developers are no more altruistic than anyone else regardless of the lies we…

It's worth mentioning that a ST4 license is $99 USD (and ST3 used to be $80).

Still a relative drop in the bucket for how powerful ST is and how much value its users derive from it, but there _is_ a bit of sticker shock when comparing it to most other software.

I say this as someone who, as a broke college student, got very good at hitting esc every 10 times I saved (which is how often it asks). I eventually switched to VSCode, and the rest is history.

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

#348

Post by ComodoHacker »

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.

That was a really shocking insight for me. We do not own our means of production. And suffer all the textbook consequences that follow.

Maybe unions could help with that. Imagine using union-funded licenses, compute, storage etc. to experiment with your side projects, build your prototypes without risk of losing IP to your current employer.

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

#349

Post by arcturus17 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #281
jonas21 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some well-known devs like Guido van Rossum and Andrej Karpathy are big fans as well [1]. [1] https://youtu.be/cdiD-9MMpb0?t=8723

Please remember that Guido van Rossum is now employed by Microsoft. Yes, I am a fan of Guido van Rossum and his work, but I am always suspicious when famous people recommend their own company's products. It feels like excellent marketing/PR that is hard to resist.

What about Karpathy, nobody pays him in principle.

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

#350

Post by wingerlang »

xavdid wrote: post #346
jollofricepeas wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Sublime Text. I sat through scores of interviews and pairing sessions with developers back when Sublime was a thing and the vast majority (>90%) of devs would rather exit out of that pop-up asking for support then pay the measly $30 or whatever regardless of their massive incomes and increased productivity that Sublime brought them. We developers are no more altruistic than anyone else regardless of the lies we…

It's worth mentioning that a ST4 license is $99 USD (and ST3 used to be $80). Still a relative drop in the bucket for how powerful ST is and how much value its users derive from it, but there _is_ a bit of sticker shock when comparing it to most other software. I say this as someone who, as a broke college student, got very good at hitting esc every 10 times I saved (which is how often it asks). I eventually switched…

I've been using Sublime Text for as long as I can remember and being good at exiting the popup is pretty accurate, I feel as if I don't even recognize it being there anymore.
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