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VSCode rebrands as "The open source AI code editor"

code.visualstudio.com

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Re: VSCode rebrands as "The open source AI code editor"

#51

Post by data-ottawa »

woodruffw wrote: post #49
data-ottawa wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of this is just crappy bonus and incentive structures. The execs want to they're using+selling AI, the investors want to believe AI can theoretically fire all the workers/drop your fixed costs, and the middle managers need to justify that they're on it by myopically pushing out features that increase the AI adoption metric. The rushed push of AI features obviously trains your users that your AI is usele…

Yeah, completely agreed. It just seems like such a funny place to have those kinds of perverted incentives, given that this stuff is actually kind of useful and clearly has market fit!

I use AI a ton and I pay for Claude happily. They've found an incredibly valuable niche and built the best products for it. I almost fail to see what value an AI editor has in comparison.

I've released a number of AI fearures at work, but they're focused on being good at one specific thing.

Re: VSCode rebrands as "The open source AI code editor"

#52

Post by fweimer »

pavon wrote: post #46
fweimer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least they are clear about it: It's an editor for open-source AI code. It's not intended to be used for maintaining internal software projects.

The most reasonable reading of that description is that VSCode itself is open source, not that it is only intended for editing open source software. Furthermore, nothing in the license suggests that. If that was their intent they were very much not clear about communicating it.

But its license is not open source. It even disallows reverse engineering.

Re: VSCode rebrands as "The open source AI code editor"

#54

Post by Mic92 »

foxrider wrote: post #34
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Microsoft allows its own code to be scanned.

Probably not, that would significantly lower the training data quality for any future models

It's ok actually. I have read some Windows code. Certainly better commented than Linux and certainly much more readable than glibc.

Re: VSCode rebrands as "The open source AI code editor"

#55

Post by achyudh »

This pivot sounds like VS Code is moving from a text editor to a thin client for AI services that Microsoft wants to push. It is one more step towards a future where our development tools (just like everything else on our computers these days) are just thin clients/wrappers around SaaS.

Emacs remains the antidote to this. I use Emacs because I want to remain the architect of my development environment, not become the consumer of a telemetry-gathering platform architected by PMs at a big tech company. It is also an absolute joy to use an environment that provides you with the same amount of power as the core maintainers, allowing you to fully inspect and modify the system even while it is running.

Re: VSCode rebrands as "The open source AI code editor"

#57

Post by tehbeard »

abhishek99 wrote: post #50
bobajeff wrote: post #3

I love vscodium but more and more I worry about how Microsoft is effecting it down stream. To the point where I'm actively looking into making my own editor. I'm putting it off for now but I'll probably start playing around with Theia and Codemirror on the side just in case.

There are very performant and capable options like SublimeText out there https://www.sublimetext.com/

How is Sublime's plugin ecosystem these days?

I'd love to move back to it (or rather, use it for dev work beyond opening large log files to search for things), or atleast have it as a backup for vscode's inevitable enshittification.

Re: VSCode rebrands as "The open source AI code editor"

#59

Post by mingus88 »

achyudh wrote: post #55

This pivot sounds like VS Code is moving from a text editor to a thin client for AI services that Microsoft wants to push. It is one more step towards a future where our development tools (just like everything else on our computers these days) are just thin clients/wrappers around SaaS. Emacs remains the antidote to this. I use Emacs because I want to remain the architect of my development environment, not become the…

My path in the emacs/vi divide forked a lifetime ago, and emacs is so fundamentally different that it was never worth sacrificing the massive productivity vim gives me to dip back into emacs

But maybe that should change. I like vscode for when I need more IDE features than I care to cobble together with plugins.

I don’t need another subscription in my life. Especially for anything I rely on.

Re: VSCode rebrands as "The open source AI code editor"

#60

Post by thiht »

gradientsrneat wrote: post #22
Apreche wrote: post #12

At least they are being honest. If you look at release notes for the past year or so, almost every improvement is related to co-pilot. Thankfully, you can still disable all that garbage and just use it as a text editor.

They still aren't honest about the fact that the official VSCode distribution isn't fully open source because, for example: you can't have VSCodium connect to the official plugin repository. It also isn't the only editor with AI integration, and more specifically these systems use LLMs. It would therefore be more honest to say that VSCode is "a visible source LLM code editor".

That doesn’t make VSCode not open source. It’s fair that third party integrations like the extension store, or some extensions, are not open source. That’s what they are, extensions.
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